Building on the theme of World No Tobacco Day 2026, “Unmasking the Appeal,” FIRS spoke exclusively with Les Hagen, Executive Director of Action on Smoking & Health (ASH) Canada and one of Canada’s leading tobacco control advocates. Drawing on decades of experience in tobacco prevention, public health policy, and youth protection, Hagen shares insights into how tobacco and nicotine companies continue to attract young people through product design, marketing strategies, and emerging technologies. In this Q&A, he examines the key drivers of youth nicotine use, the regulatory challenges created by rapidly evolving products, and the policy measures needed to better safeguard the next generation from nicotine addiction.
- This year’s World No Tobacco Day theme focuses on “unmasking the appeal” of tobacco and nicotine products. What has made these products so appealing—and so effective at attracting young people globally?
The tobacco and nicotine industries have developed products that have wide appeal among youth. These include sleek, attractive, and colourful nicotine vaping devices that are easy to conceal and use without detection. Juul was the first of these products, with concentrated nicotine salts and flavours that appealed to youth, packaged in a sleeve that resembled a USB memory stick to unwitting parents and teachers. These devices have been widely promoted in mass media, at retail locations, and on social media platforms with large youth audiences. In 2019, Time Magazine profiled the impact of Juul on the explosive rise in youth vaping in a cover story titled “The New American Addiction: How Juul hooked kids and ignited a public health crisis”. Juul has been successfully sued and agreed to settlements with dozens of U.S. states for its contribution to the youth vaping epidemic. Generation Z is the first generation to be exposed to omnipresent Internet and social media promotions. The youth vaping epidemic is a colossal social failure, and Gen Z has become the lost nicotine generation. We cannot lose another generation to nicotine or tobacco addiction.
The packaging and design of these products do not reflect the severity or risk of nicotine addiction, which is one of the strongest chemical dependencies in existence. After being tempted by the colours, flavours and appeal of these products—including the strong nicotine “buzz”—young people are often trapped by the addiction. The promotion of these products on social media, including endorsements and depictions by celebrities and influencers, only increases their broad appeal among teens and adolescents. Many of these products contain digital displays, games, animations, sounds, cartoon characters and even Bluetooth and texting capabilities. These features and gimmicks add further youth appeal.
The obvious solution is to better align effective regulations on tobacco products with typically inadequate regulations on vaping products. These measures include comprehensive advertising restrictions, the removal of flavours that appeal to youth, stronger health warnings with graphic images, plain packaging, tax increases, and strong product standards. The regulatory gap has resulted from heavy industry lobbying, rapid product development, regulatory delays, political indecision and deliberations about the harm reduction potential of vaping products. However, harm reduction also applies to youth who have never smoked and need to be protected from tobacco and nicotine addiction. The precautionary principle should always apply when it comes to protecting youth. Numerous tobacco control policy measures have proven effective in protecting young people, and these must be applied to nicotine vaping products.
- New products like disposable vapes and synthetic nicotine systems continue to evolve rapidly. Where do you see the biggest regulatory blind spots in countering both their appeal and addictive potential?
The number of nicotine puffs/hits in some of these devices now exceeds 100,000. Synthetic nicotine is more difficult to regulate, especially since it’s a moving target. Online sales increase youth access to these products. The vaping market is being flooded by products from various countries that often enter international borders through illegal channels. New nicotine products with broad appeal among youth are being introduced, including pouches. These challenges can be largely addressed, but it requires a concerted and focused effort by national regulators. A robust regulatory process is needed to control the market, including approvals for new products, and stronger enforcement is needed to identify violations, including contraband products.
- Looking ahead, what combination of policy and public health action is most urgently needed to both “unmask the appeal” and reduce nicotine addiction among young people worldwide?
This is deliberately repetitive, but the simple answer is that governments need to better align policies on tobacco and nicotine products. This does not mean complete alignment, but governments should apply the strong evidence surrounding tobacco product regulation to the regulation of non-therapeutic nicotine products. Adopting effective tobacco control laws should always be the top priority, but the same measures should extend to nicotine products when appropriate. Many countries have included nicotine vaping products in their national tobacco control legislation but have rarely aligned these regulations. The bottom line is that young people deserve first-class protection from tobacco and nicotine products. Nicotine protection is typically taking a backseat to tobacco protection, and young people continue to suffer the addictive and harmful consequences.