Candy cigarettes are one example of how tobacco products are still marketed to children (figure 1).1,2 While several countries across the world including Canada, New Zealand and Brazil ban the sale of ‘kiddie cigarettes’, in the USA, World Confections continues to manufacture these faux-cigarettes that are packaged like the real thing.3 For decades, smoking rates have been declining, but the emergence of alternative nicotine delivery devices such as e-cigarettes is reversing this trend, particularly among youth. For example, e-cigarette use increased by 78% in high school students and 48% in middle school students between 2017 and 2018.4 This recent upswing in smoking behaviours among youth brings candy cigarettes back under the spotlight. Children who use candy cigarettes are twice as likely to try tobacco products, regardless of whether their parents smoke or not.1 One in five adult smokers regularly consumed candy cigarettes as children,5 and 9 out of 10 started smoking as teenagers.6 Smoking and use of tobacco products is still the leading cause of preventable death in the USA,2 and candy cigarettes are bait to what big-tobacco call ‘replacement smokers’. The time to join the rest of the developed world in banning candy cigarettes is long overdue.
Figure 1.
Candy cigarettes are still available in the USA.
Footnotes
Competing interests FP receives free study medication from Pfizer.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
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