Youth and young adults overwhelmingly believe that tobacco and vaping companies lie about the harm of their products, spread faulty research, attract kids with flavored products and should be regulated more, according to the new Truth Initiative report “Seeing Through Big Tobacco’s Spin.” This distrust was reported even among a large majority of tobacco users.
Faced with dramatic declines in smoking, the tobacco industry has been rolling out and aggressively marketing flashy new electronic and flavored products to grow its market among youth and young adults while trying to rebrand its image with large-scale public relations investments disguised as public health initiatives. Young people see through these tactics: In addition to believing that vaping companies lie about how harmful their products are (92%) and believing them to be dishonest about the health effects of their products (69%), young people didn’t buy that tobacco companies are part of the solution to end smoking (65%). They also overwhelmingly believed that the tobacco industry uses fruit and candy flavors to get young people to try e-cigarettes (79%). In fact, research tells us that 97% percent of youth who vape use flavors and more than 80% of youth 12-17 who have used tobacco report that they began with a flavored product.