this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Want to keep Gen Z off vaping? Teach them about the industry's marketing tactics, study says (medicalxpress.com)
submitted 10 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/health@lemmy.world
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Young adults who are more familiar with e-cigarette marketing practices are more likely to have attitudes against vaping than those unaware of the industry's marketing, according to a study led by Drexel University public health researchers published this month in the journal Tobacco Control.

Expanding on ways cigarettes were marketed in the 1970s, such as using models and hosting smoking events, e-cigarette marketing includes more modern tactics, like paying social media influencers to promote vaping. The findings, from researchers at Drexel's Dornsife School of Public Health and The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, suggest that efforts to educate young people about e-cigarette marketing tactics can help reduce the number of new vape users.

The researchers surveyed 1,329 young adults, 18–30, who never used tobacco products—but were deemed "susceptible to vaping," from their responses to screening questions—about their awareness of the e-cigarette industry's marketing practices and their level of agreement with anti-e-cigarette attitude statements, such as "taking a stand against vaping is important to me."

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[–] aelwero@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Switched from a 25 year smoking habit to vaping. Been vaping for over a decade now, and I have absolutely no idea what "the ecigarette industry"'s marketing practices are...

Are we talking about the actual vaping industry, or the tobacconists "vape" products that you find in every gas station?

I don't recall having ever seen an ad for kanger, smok, or voopoo... Plenty for njoy, vuse, and juul though, which kinda leads me to think that the ads in question are for tobacco company products.

[–] Jeremyward@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I smoked for 15 years before switching to vape. I was an early adopter so I used the old shitty stuff and I still build my own (more like assemble) like wise I get blank nicotine from a reputable vendor which has tested it. It's 99% better for me than smoking ever was. I hate this push in America against vaping. Granted I'm not smoking the shitty purple blueberry stuff or whatever but it's saved my life.

[–] oktoberpaard@feddit.nl 5 points 10 months ago

As an alternative for smoking tobacco it’s great, but as an alternative for not smoking at all, not so much. I think it’s fair to try to avoid people getting hooked on nicotine. At the same time I appreciate how vaping has changed your life for the better.

[–] Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago

I started vaping to stop smoking too. It feels like I can physically breathe easier, I don't smell like cigarettes, and it's easier to only have one puff from a vape vs only having one put from a cigarette.

Oddly enough, 99% of the pushback that I've heard from people in real life came from cigarette smokers. Jokes on them though, it's helping to keep me away from cigarettes out of spite at this point.

Some people heard about the popcorn lung fiasco caused by black market cannabis pods, and decided to make it their life goal to mention it to anyone that they see vaping. It's as if they feel like they just magically KNOW that all vapes will cause it, no exceptions.

To get fewer young people to stop vaping, they're going to have to do a lot. Helping with the rampant mental health issues would be a good start. Nothing keeps an addiction going like continuous pain and internal struggles. Adults struggle with it too, yet a lot of people just assume young people are going to magically pull coping mechanisms from their rear.

[–] li10@feddit.uk 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I really think if the government wants to stop people vaping/drinking/gambling, then they should just put heavy restrictions on advertising for those products.

The amount of sports betting and alcohol ads while you’re trying to watch a sport is truly disgusting.

[–] Galapagon@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago

Yep, went to a baseball game where they were offering free swag then looked shocked when I told them what I thought of mobile gamified gambling

[–] stackPeek@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

How does companies advertise tabacco in your country? In my country advertisement about tabacco that explicitly shows someone's smoking are pretty much banned for decades by now. Nowadays those companies just advertising themselves by showing their logo accompanied by some cool interesting slogan.

[–] Rogers@lemmy.ml 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Before ecigs were popular teenagers would get cought smoking real cigarettes far more often.

It's unfortunate how thoroughly the tobacco lobby has convinced the west that ecigs should be regulated the same as analog cigarettes. It's still better to just inhale air over an ecig but even salt nicotine ecigs are many many times safer than traditional tobacco, and nicotine isolate is much less additive, and has done more to get people to entirely quit than any anti tobacco campaign.

[–] iiGxC@slrpnk.net 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if a similar thing would work for animal agriculture, telling people about all the lobbying they do to get taxpayer money from subsidies to keep exploiting other animals

[–] kreynen@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Bacon doesn't need marketing. A marketing campaign using facts to change consumer behavior is just marketing. Not really the same as and effort to educate kids to recognize marketing.

I work in marketing so I recognize it in all its forms. I am very concerned about the amount of influcing my kids are exposed to through "safe", "ad free" channels like YouTube Kids.

I also consider myself well informed about environmental issues. I consciously eat less meat for both environmental and health reasons, but bacon doesn't need marketing. I want bacon because I REALLY enjoy bacon.

[–] iiGxC@slrpnk.net 0 points 10 months ago

The scope of my comment was wider than bacon and wider than marketing to consumers, but I get your point.

Also in my mind health and environment are the weakest arguments against eating animal products. Exploiting and harming others for our own pleasure is unethical, that should be more than enough reason to change our behavior on both a societal and individual level. To bring that back to my original point, informing people that trying to justify hurting others for pleasure is ok because "they're just animals" or something is a pretty twisted, un-empathetic way to look at things and animal agriculture is happy to exploit those excuses (and in turn, the animals) for profit. Showing people that their apathy and selfishness is being preyed upon for profit, could have a similar result as showing teens that they're being manipulated into buying a product

[–] kreynen@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The fact that teaching media/marketing literacy reduces its effectiveness is not new.

The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. - Marshall McLuhan 1964

It isn't just vaping that would be effected by teaching kids to be more aware of marketing. I work in marketing on the marketing automation or marketing ops side of things in higher ed. If teenagers were more aware of the techniques we use to influence them to borrow tens or even hundreads of thousand of $$$ to enroll in a 4 year degree, fewer would... and that would probably be a good thing.