This is especially true among youth users: it’s one of the main reasons young people experiment with tobacco or nicotine products in the first place, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

Flavoured nicotine and tobacco products are inherently addictive and toxic – often more so than regular tobacco. Flavours increase usage, make quitting harder, and have been linked to serious lung diseases, WHO maintains.

Despite decades of progress in tobacco control, flavoured products are luring a new generation into addiction and contributing to eight million tobacco-related deaths each year.

Youth-oriented marketing

Nicotine products are often marketed directly toward young people through bright and colourful packaging featuring sweet and fruity flavour descriptors.

Research shows that this type of advertising can trigger reward centres in adolescent brains and weaken the impact of health warnings.

Young people also report a growing presence of flavoured nicotine product marketing across all social media platforms.

This marketing of flavours works across all forms of nicotine and tobacco products, including cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars, pouches and hookahs.

WHO said flavours such as menthol, bubble gum and cotton candy, are “masking the harshness of tobacco” and other nicotine products, turning what are toxic products “into youth-friendly bait.”

Call for action

Just ahead of World No Tobacco Day, the UN health agency released a series of fact sheets and called on governments to ban all flavours in tobacco and nicotine products to protect young people from lifelong addiction and disease.

It cited Articles 9 and 10 of the successful 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which obliges countries to regulate the contents and disclosure of tobacco products, including flavourings.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that “without bold action, the global tobacco epidemic…will continue to be driven by addiction dressed up with appealing flavours.”

As of December 2024, over 50 countries had adopted policies regulating tobacco additives, with most targeting flavourings by banning flavour labels or images and restricting the sale of flavored products. Some also control flavour use during production.

However, the WHO noted that tobacco companies and retailers have found ways to circumvent these rules, offering flavour accessories including sprays, cards, capsules and filter tips, to add to unflavoured products.

Still, WHO is urging all 184 FCTC parties (which make up 90 per cent of the world’s population) to implement and enforce strong bans and restrictions on flavoured products and related additives.