[Tobacco industry strategies to attract new and young smokers]

"Tobacco industry strategies to attract new and young smokers .Tobacco consumption, the paradigm of an industrial pandemic, has been declining in recent years around the world, following implementation of the recommendations of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). To survive, the four transnational companies that control the market must adapt their strategy, which they do by shifting from the tobacco trade to the wider nicotine trade through the promotion of new products (electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products). However, two intangible but well-established facts remain: the initiation to tobacco/nicotine consumption occurs almost exclusively during childhood; on the other hand and that age group is very sensitive to marketing and purchasing impulses. Therefore, the industrials must target young people and ease their access to their products. Once the initial nicotine intake has been established, the drug takes over and enforces continuous consumption due to its highly addictive nature. Nonetheless, as explicit targeting of the youth is not a socially acceptable practice, the industry will conceal its strategy behind the façade of promoting harm reduction for adult smokers who wish to do this. Although communication channels are recent, such as the Internet, social media, platforms and more generally, what is commonly accepted as « communication below the line  », the methods that aim at reinforcing established nicotine consumption as a social norm are of the same nature as those previously used for the promotion of cigarettes: glamour, seduction, youth, motorsports, tech, adventure, independence, maturity. Unfortunately, the rate of smoking among young people in France remains high due to the effectiveness of this marketing, combined with the easy accessibility to the product, due to non-compliance by tobacco sellers with the current legislation prohibiting sales to minors."