World No Tobacco Day 2024: Protecting Children and Respecting Adults Are Not the Same Thing

LAGOS, NIGERIA — The 2024 theme of World No Tobacco Day, set by the World Health Organization, is "Protecting children from tobacco industry interference." The Foundation for Consumer Freedom Advancement (FCFA) supports the theme and the work behind it. Children are not consumers and should never be treated as a market for any nicotine product. We support strict, enforced limits on advertising to minors, on flavour designs intended to appeal to young people, on access at the point of sale, and on the marketing tactics that have been documented across multiple jurisdictions for targeting young consumers.

We also believe a separate, related point needs to be made today, because it is the point that often gets lost when policy responses are designed in haste. Protecting children and respecting adult choice are two different policy questions. They cannot be solved with the same instrument.

Two Distinct Populations, Two Distinct Policies

The case for aggressive child-focused regulation is clear and uncontested. Adolescent brains develop differently from adult brains. Nicotine exposure during adolescence carries documented developmental risks. Marketing tactics that have, in some markets, deliberately blurred the line between candy and nicotine product packaging deserve regulatory action commensurate with the harm they cause. None of this is in dispute, and FCFA does not dispute it.

The case for adult-focused policy is also clear, but it points in a different direction. African adults who already smoke have a right to information, access, and the choice to switch from combustible cigarettes to less harmful products if they decide that is the right decision for them. That is not an industry talking point. It is the position of public health authorities in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Sweden, and Japan, and it is the position grounded in decades of comparative international evidence on smoking-related disease.

When governments justify removing safer alternatives from adult smokers by pointing to the harm being done to children, they are conflating two questions that have very different answers. Children should not have access to nicotine products of any kind. Adult smokers should have a less harmful option than the cigarette they would otherwise be smoking. Both of those statements are true at the same time, and policy that delivers only one of them is incomplete.

Where Africa Stands

Tobacco use among adults in the WHO African Region has declined from 14.9% in 2010 to 9.5% in 2023. The progress is real and worth acknowledging on a day like today. But the next phase of that progress requires policy that distinguishes between products that should never reach children and products that adult smokers should be able to access under proper regulation. That distinction is currently being lost in several African legislative processes, where reduced-risk products are being treated identically to combustible cigarettes in proposed regulatory frameworks.

The result is a policy direction that protects no one effectively. Children are not the primary users of regulated reduced-risk products in any African market. Adult smokers, who are the primary users, are being told the safer alternative is no different from the cigarette. And the illicit market, which is unregulated, untaxed, and uninterested in age verification, fills the gap.

What the Day Should Mean

For FCFA, World No Tobacco Day is an annual reminder that consumer-respecting tobacco policy is possible. It looks like aggressive child protection, honest information for adults, regulated access to safer alternatives, and policymakers willing to treat the two age groups as the different populations they are. Africa can build that policy. The work is on.