Youth vs tobacco

For decades, the notorious tobacco industry has been engaged in deliberately employing strategic, aggressive and well-resourced tactics to attract the youth of this country towards tobacco and other nicotine products. So strong have been the tobacco lobby that massive and aggressive counter-campaigns run in the recent years has hardly been able to protect the youth from the magnetic qualities of killer tobacco. An analysis of internal industry documents conducted by World Health Organization has revealed that the tobacco industry has been carrying out in-depth, well-researched and calculated approaches to attract the new generation. These range from product design to marketing campaigns aimed at replacing the millions of people who die each year from tobacco-attributable diseases with new consumers – our youth. Given this alarming scenario, WHO has announced "Protecting youth from industry manipulation and preventing them from tobacco and nicotine use" as the theme of this year's World No Tobacco Day, which falls on May 31. In response to the tobacco and related industries' systematic, aggressive and sustained tactics to attract a new generation of tobacco users, the theme for World No Tobacco Day 2020 in fact is intended at providing a counter-marketing campaign and empowering our young people to engage in the fight against Big Tobacco. There is no second opinion that the world cannot afford another generation to be deceived and lured by the blatant lies of the tobacco industry, which pretends to promote freedom of personal choice while in reality ensures nothing but eternal profits, regardless of the fact that millions of people – and young people – pay with their life each year. That exactly is why WHO has called upon influencers – in pop culture, on social media, in the home, or in the classroom – who reach and connect with youth, to expose the manipulative tactics of the notorious tobacco industry to create a new generation of tobacco users. The youth have to stand up and say No to tobacco, today and for all times.