Half of teen smokers go for favoured products, up risk of getting hooked: study

TORONTO – A new study finds that among Canadian teens who use tobacco, more than half are opting for products with such flavours as bubble-gum, cherry or watermelon.

The University of Waterloo study on flavoured tobacco use is based on the 2010-2011 Youth Smoking Survey of Grade 9-12 students from across Canada.

Researchers also found that among students who reported smoking cigarettes in the 30 days prior to the survey, 32 per cent chose to puff on menthol-flavoured brands.

Lead author Leia Minaker says the tobacco industry promotes cigarettes, cigarillos and smokeless tobacco with a variety of flavours and glitzy packaging to attract young people to the addictive products.

Minaker says the danger is that when tobacco is flavoured to make it tasty, it seems less like tobacco and young people are more likely to use it.

Ottawa’s Bill C-32 banned flavoured tobacco products weighing less than 1.4 grams — excluding menthol products — but Minaker says the industry has found a way around the law by slightly increasing their weight.

Several jurisdictions, including Alberta, are fashioning their own legislation to strengthen the prohibition against flavoured tobacco products. Minaker, a postdoctoral fellow at the university’s Propel Centre for Population Health Impact, called that an important step in preventing young Canadians from getting hooked on nicotine.

“If people are going to use tobacco, then it should taste like tobacco,” she said from Waterloo, Ont. “It should be harsh smoke that they’re inhaling and should not be hidden in the flavours that are being added to the products.

“If tobacco use is really appealing for kids, then more kids will start to use tobacco. And tobacco is incredibly addictive and it will make it harder and harder for people to quit and to remain tobacco-free for life.”

The research was published Thursday in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control journal Preventing Chronic Disease.

Minaker said a recently published separate study by a colleague found that young people who smoked menthol cigarettes were almost three times more likely to say they would continue the habit and also smoke more cigarettes per day, compared to kids who smoked non-menthol brands.

“So if we said no more flavours at all, then likely that extra addiction to nicotine because of menthol and the speedier progression to full-blown regular tobacco use because of menthol wouldn’t be there anymore,” she said.

“To make a deadly product more appealing for kids to start using needs to be stopped. Full stop.”

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