FLAVOR ATTRACTS

The Tobacco Industry spends $71.3 million annually on marketing in Nevada.

Every year, people quit tobacco or die from tobacco-related diseases, so the tobacco industry constantly recruits new smokers to offset those losses and maintain their profits. To attract younger customers, the industry uses bright, colorful packaging and an assortment of fun flavors with names like Blueberry Cake, Lava Flow, Energy Ice, and Strawberry Crunch.

Studies show that the majority of adults who smoke cigarettes daily first tried smoking before the age of 18, making youth a key target for these marketing efforts. Youth are twice as sensitive to tobacco advertising as adults and are more likely to be influenced by these advertisements than by peer pressure. This strategy ensures that today’s youth become the next generation of nicotine addicts.

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What Are Flavored
Tobacco Products?

Flavored tobacco products are any nicotine-containing products with a taste or smell other than that of tobacco. This includes smokeless tobacco, chewing tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, vape liquid (used in vapes/e-cigarettes), electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), nicotine gels, dissolvables, hookah, and pipe tobacco.

There are over 15,000 e-cigarette (vape) flavors alone, many of which are youth-luring with “candy flavors” like chocolate, mint, bubble gum, gummy bear, berry blend, cotton candy, strawberry, and blue raspberry.

Flavoring improves the taste and helps mask the harshness of tobacco. It can even give the impression that flavored tobacco products are less harmful than non-flavored products, leading to an increase in nicotine addiction.

Baiting With
Flavoring

The CDC reports that about 4,100 people who smoke die each year from tobacco-related illnesses in Nevada. Nationally, this number is close to 480,000 lives lost each year. To replace those who quit or die, the tobacco industry targets impressionable middle and high schoolers as new customers. They use new flavors, flashy packaging, and low prices for products like e-cigarettes, cigarillos, smokeless tobacco, and oral pouches to attract youth. These products are often small and sleek, making them easy to hide.

Despite stricter laws and policies, the tobacco industry has found savvy ways to attract new consumers and keep current users hooked. Studies show that higher nicotine levels in flavored e-cigarette products are tied to greater dependence and lower motivation to quit. Currently, there are no limits on nicotine concentration levels in e-cigarettes in the United States.

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Youth Prefer Flavors

Adding flavoring to tobacco products entices people to start smoking, as studies show both adults and children prefer flavored products. Research reveals that the younger the individual, the more likely they are to use flavored tobacco products. In fact, 81% of youth who have ever used a tobacco product started with a flavored item.

Among current youth e-cigarette users, 84.7% use flavored e-cigarettes, including 85.8% of high school users and 79.2% of middle school users.

Cigar manufacturers also target younger smokers by making cheap, small, sweet-flavored cigars that come 2-4 per pack. Additionally, 73.8% of youth who smoke cigars say they do so “because they come in flavors I like.”

Graph Source: The Truth Initiative

ADDICTION
ISN’T SWEET

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Health Risks

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Electronic vapor products are still fairly new, and scientists are still learning about their long-term health effects. What we do know is that youth have a false perception of flavored tobacco products, and this is putting them in danger. According to a Truth Initiative study, most youth perceive flavored tobacco products as being less harmful than traditional cigarettes.

The flavoring added to tobacco products masks the harshness of tobacco, making smoking and vaping more tolerable, exposing the user to many harmful toxins, and increasing the risk of addiction.

  • A CDC study shows that youth who use flavored tobacco products are more likely to smoke regularly, experience nicotine addiction, and cause damage to their developing brains.
  • Smoking at a young age also increases the risk of developing tobacco-related illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, and cancers of the bladder, throat, mouth, kidney, cervix, and pancreas, as well as early death.
  • Research linked this EVALI outbreak to vitamin E acetate, an additive that is only harmful when inhaled. However, there are many different substances and product sources still being researched, and there may be more than one cause.

Flavoring Regulations

The FDA’s Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (2009) banned the sale of all flavored cigarettes except menthol. This ban was later extended to other tobacco products, including e-cigarettes (vapes) that use pre-filled flavored cartridges (pods).

The ban on pre-filled flavored cartridges did NOT extend to disposable single-use devices that do not use a cartridge or to open-systems that allow consumers to refill or mix and load their own ‘e-liquid’ or ‘e-juice’ into their devices.

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Media

IN THE NEWS

Flavoured vapes may produce many harmful chemicals when e-liquids are heated
May 2024
Get Involved
Teen vaping linked with toxic lead exposure, study finds
April 2024
Vapes disguised as school supplies worry authorities and prompt warnings as items pour into US from China
August 21, 2023
Close the flavored e-cigarette loophole — it's time for the FDA to protect kids
May 2023
Get Involved
The Legislature should get ahead of feds, enact stricter tobacco laws
June 2022
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References