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Review
. 2022 Mar;31(2):222-228.
doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2021-056552.

Moving targets: how the rapidly changing tobacco and nicotine landscape creates advertising and promotion policy challenges

Pamela M Ling  1 , Minji Kim  2 , Catherine O Egbe  3   4 , Roengrudee Patanavanich  5 , Mariana Pinho  6 , Yogi Hendlin  7
Affiliations
Review

Moving targets: how the rapidly changing tobacco and nicotine landscape creates advertising and promotion policy challenges

Pamela M Ling et al. Tob Control. 2022 Mar.

Abstract

Tobacco, nicotine and related products have and continue to change rapidly, creating new challenges for policies regulating their advertising, promotion, sponsorship and sales. This paper reviews recent commercial product offerings and the regulatory challenges associated with them. This includes electronic nicotine delivery systems, electronic non-nicotine delivery systems, personal vaporisers, heated tobacco products, nicotine salts, tobacco-free nicotine products, other nicotine products resembling nicotine replacement therapies, and various vitamin and cannabis products that share delivery devices or marketing channels with tobacco products. There is substantial variation in the availability of these tobacco, nicotine, vaporised, and related products globally, and policies regulating these products also vary substantially between countries. Many of these products avoid regulation by exploiting loopholes in the definition of tobacco or nicotine products, or by occupying a regulatory grey area where authority is unclear. These challenges will increase as the tobacco industry continues to diversify its product portfolio, and weaponises 'tobacco harm reduction' rhetoric to undermine policies limiting marketing, promotion and taxation of tobacco, nicotine and related products. Tobacco control policy often lags behind the evolution of the industry, which may continue to sell these products for years while regulations are established, refined or enforced. Policies that anticipate commercial tobacco, nicotine and related product and marketing changes and that are broad enough to cover these product developments are needed.

Keywords: advertising and promotion; electronic nicotine delivery devices; nicotine; non-cigarette tobacco products; tobacco industry.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flavoured ‘add on’ products. ‘Puff Krush’ flavoured silicon caps for pod vape devices in the USA (left), and crushable flavour beads sold for insertion into cigarettes in Thailand (right).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Warning labels appearing on ‘tobacco-free nicotine’ product websites in the USA with bespoke wording adopting the product’s preferred terminology.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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