Tobacco, vaping under accusation. “A Trojan horse: it creates addiction in young people”

Seven million deaths per year related to tobacco use, and 1.3 million from passive smoking. Still apocalyptic figures that justify the term epidemic used by the World Health Organization to present the data of its tenth report 2025 on global tobacco consumption. A presentation in grand style, during the opening day of the World Conference on Tobacco Control, the global conference on tobacco control, organized in Dublin by The Union (International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease), with the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies, which announced a $20 million funding to accelerate progress in those countries where the fight against tobacco is at a standstill.

The intervention of the WHO director

The director general of the WHO himself, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, acknowledged in front of the audience of 3200 delegates from all over the world in the crowded inaugural session that much has been done. But that the road ahead is still long, and full of the pitfalls of the industry in the sector that uses every possible weapon - from aggressive marketing to the seduction of aromas in new products - to reach new consumers with products less connoted than traditional cigarettes. Products that, not surprisingly, are still poorly regulated even if behind every device - they underline at the beginning - there is always the same old addiction.

Today, joint efforts have protected 6.1 billion people. But that’s not enough. At least half of global cases of disease – diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer – are preventable because the causes are known: tobacco, alcohol, over-processed foods, physical inactivity and pollution. What to do? “We ask countries to implement at the highest levels at least one element of Mpower in a year,” recommends Ghebreyesus, “and we ask researchers for more scientific evidence on new products.”

What is Mpower and how does it work?

The WHO focus starts from the six interventions that measure the efficiency of countries in controlling smoking and tobacco: the acronym is Mpower. M stands for monitoring tobacco use and prevention policies, p for protecting citizens with laws for clean and smoke-free air, o for an active and free offer of programs to help people quit smoking, w for warnings about the dangers of smoking with package labels and through communication with information and press campaigns, e for strengthening and expanding bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and the possibility of sponsoring events, r for increasing taxes on tobacco. Each of these measures works, all together they are a turning point, a paradigm shift in the fight against tobacco.

Since 2007, 155 countries have implemented at least one of the measures provided by Mpower, so that today 6.1 billion people, three quarters of the world's population, are protected by at least one of the points provided, compared to only one billion in 2007. Four countries, however, have managed to apply the entire package: Brazil, Mauritius, the Netherlands and Turkey, while 7 are at 5 - therefore an excellent control - and they are Ethiopia, Ireland, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia and Spain. Then there are 40 countries that have not yet started the Mpower path and more than 30 that allow the sale of cigarettes without messages about health risks. Italy - with 20% of habitual daily smokers (2023 data) is promoted only for monitoring and warnings on packages (but not for information and press campaigns) and for the stop to advertising, promotion and sponsorship of events. Our country still has a tax rate of 77%, two points higher than that suggested by the WHO. But far from first place Finland, which has a 90% tax on tobacco products, and last place Monaco, which has a tax rate of only 16.7%.

And we are not just talking about traditional cigarettes, of course. Because the new front is that of alternative products to traditional tobacco, such as nicotine not in the form of tobacco, smoke-free products (oral or nasal tobacco) and above all e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, which are seducing young adults and adolescents almost all over the world and for which we are moving towards stringent regulation. A Trojan horse, as Douglas Bettcher , Senior Advisor to the Director General of the WHO, has defined these new formulations, denouncing the sneaky way in which tobacco companies try to avoid more severe laws, restrictions on sales, messages related to the harm of tobacco.

34 countries have banned vaping

In 2022, 121 countries have regulated vaping, 74 have not. Of the 121, 34 have banned its sale, including Australia, Brazil, Singapore, and 87 – covering 3.3 billion people – have adopted complete or partial regulation. The problem is that almost half of the countries (47%) are not monitoring the use of these devices among adolescents and 67% have no data on use among adults, which not only results in a lack of surveillance but also in an objective difficulty of intervention where it is not known how many smokers there are, how old they are and whether they are multi-smokers, that is, whether they also use traditional cigarettes.

Some data

But let's talk about data. From 2007 to 2023, the global prevalence of smoking decreased from 22.3 to 16.4% and the percentages decreased everywhere, even in low- and middle-income countries, although slightly less (23%) than in high-income countries (31%). Two-thirds of smokers in the world still live in middle-income countries while the highest percentage - 23.9% - of adult smokers is in higher-income countries. Only 4% of smokers in the world live in low-income countries, where the prevalence is the lowest, about 10%.

Sales to minors

Most countries have banned tobacco sales to minors. But good intentions are not enough: a study conducted in schools in 154 countries revealed that 30 million children between the ages of 13 and 15 are tobacco users: 12 million of these use e-cigarettes. This should not surprise us too much, given that according to data released a few weeks ago on the occasion of No Tobacco Day by our National Institute of Health, 7.5% of middle school children between the ages of 11 and 13 smoke or vape, and 37.4% of children between the ages of 14 and 17 in secondary schools. 70% of those who said they smoke are also poly-consumers, meaning they smoke whatever is available, including traditional cigarettes.

A Tobacco-Free Generation

The goal is to build a tobacco-free generation. And it is done by bringing together many policies. “We need to ban e-cigarettes,” the young Gene Gesite , of the GGTC (Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control), attacks from the stage. “In recent years I have watched with growing concern the grip of new products on young people. We are calling for the ban on e-cigarettes, on communication on harm reduction and we want to reject industry interference. The tobacco-free generation starts here, in Dublin. And it starts now.”