By Gene Gesite Jr., Juan Herrera, Sama Ghozlan, Sarah Rauzana and Winnie Olwal
BANGKOK | 8 August 2026 (IDN) — On International Youth Day (12 August), youth advocates around the world are calling on governments to take stronger action to protect young people from nicotine addiction.
In Asia, proposals in the Philippines to raise the minimum purchasing age of nicotine products do not fully address nicotine addiction or effectively protect young people from industry targeting. In Indonesia, where one in five students aged 13–17 use tobacco and 12% use e-cigarettes, social media promotion—including a recent YouTube livestream involving children promoting vapes—illustrates how digital content can normalize addictive products among young audiences.
Other tobacco products are also targeting youth. In Egypt, waterpipe smoking is increasingly attracting young people, with adolescent girls found to be 11 times more likely to smoke waterpipes than adult women. In Europe, the rapid spread of nicotine pouches among adolescents in Sweden shows how quickly new nicotine products can become normalized.
Across Africa, the threat is taking a slightly different form. In Kenya, industry pressure weakened proposed health warnings on nicotine pouches. In Zambia, the legislative process has become a stark illustration of tobacco industry interference, marked by sustained lobbying, economic scare tactics, and demands to dilute provisions banning advertising and flavourings, requiring graphic health warnings on packs, and imposing penalties for violations. Tobacco interests have sought to delay and weaken the long-awaited tobacco control bill, placing commercial interests above the health of young people.
Latin America is also witnessing moves towards weaker tobacco and nicotine regulation, threatening hard-won public health progress achieved in recent years. Colombia’s experience demonstrates that legislation must be accompanied by effective enforcement and regularly updated to keep pace with evolving industry products and strategies.
One Industry, One Business Model
Although our experiences differ because of varying laws, institutions and cultures, we all confront the same industry business model: addictive products made attractive, early recruitment of consumers, and ineffective public policies that fail to protect young people. The resulting costs are borne by our families, governments and future generations.
This International Youth Day, under the theme “Different Contexts, Common Aspirations,” youth advocates participating in the Global Youth Voices initiative are bringing their experiences together around one common demand: governments must protect our generation faster than the tobacco and nicotine industry can adapt.
This is no longer simply a debate about cigarettes or vaping. It is about whether public institutions can effectively regulate nicotine itself while companies continually redesign how it is delivered. The World Health Organization estimates that at least 15 million children aged 13–15 already use various forms of e-cigarettes. Children are, on average, nine times more likely than adults to vape.
The urgency continues to grow. Palau has recently taken an important step by initiating an international review of nicotine, triggering an assessment by the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence—an independent scientific body that evaluates psychoactive substances, dependence and public health risks.
Four Urgent Priorities
Product innovation is moving rapidly, while public regulation often lags behind, responding to one device, flavour or product category at a time. The result is a recurring cycle in which new products reach the market before governments establish effective safeguards.
Closing that gap requires four urgent actions.
First, governments must stop the pipeline to addiction. Global Youth Voices calls for bans on novel recreational addictive tobacco and nicotine products. Governments should immediately prohibit flavours and youth-oriented product designs, restrict access, and enforce comprehensive bans on advertising, promotion and sponsorship, including through influencers, sport, entertainment and digital platforms.
These restrictions are urgently needed as interim protections. They should not be viewed as the final objective but as steps toward creating a generation free from recreational nicotine addiction.
Second, the industry must pay. Tobacco companies should bear the health, environmental, social and economic costs of their products. Waste and pollution from cigarettes, vapes and other nicotine products undermine the right of present and future generations to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Governments can apply liability and the polluter-pays principle through levies, penalties, litigation, compensation, remediation and other cost-recovery measures.
Companies should not gain legitimacy or privileged access to policymakers through corporate social responsibility programmes, recycling initiatives or extended producer responsibility schemes. An industry cannot credibly present itself as part of the solution while continuing to produce addiction, disease and toxic waste.
Protect Science, Protect Public Policy
Third, governments must protect policymaking. Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control requires Parties to shield public health policy from the tobacco industry’s commercial and vested interests. Its guidelines call for limited and transparent interaction with the industry, rejection of partnerships, prevention of conflicts of interest and the denormalisation of industry-sponsored “social responsibility.”
Fourth, nicotine science must remain independent. The WHO review should comprehensively examine nicotine dependence, its effects on developing brains, product design, patterns of use and population-level consequences. Tobacco and nicotine companies must not be permitted to shape scientific evidence through funded researchers, consultants, front groups or other proxies.
These safeguards must extend beyond health ministries. Decisions concerning youth, education, finance, trade, agriculture, the environment, digital regulation and sport all influence the industry’s ability to market its products and shape public policy.
Our Future Is Not Their Market
By the end of 2026, governments and international institutions should publish the concrete measures they will take regarding independent nicotine science, addiction prevention, industry liability and protection from industry interference. Progress must be measured by tangible outcomes—not by slogans, voluntary commitments or corporate public relations campaigns.
The tobacco industry is already planning its next products, its next narratives and its next generation of customers.
Governments must be even more ambitious: building a generation protected from addiction, preventing industry interference, and ending the inheritance of avoidable harm.
Different contexts. Common youth demands. Our future is not their market.
The authors are youth advocates from the Global Youth Voices (GYV), a movement of youth organisations and coalitions representing more than 135 countries. They work across public health, youth rights, good governance, corporate accountability and the protection of future generations.
Gene Gesite Jr. is the Coordinator of Global Youth Voices.
Juan Herrera is the Coordinator of Alianza Juvenil.
Sama Ghozlan is the Public Health Advocacy Coordinator of the International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation.
Sarah Rauzana is the Chairperson of the ASEAN Youth Organization.
Winnie Olwal is the Acting Director of Youth in Action (Y-ACT). [IDN-InDepthNews]