World No Tobacco Day 2025: The Appeal Worth Unmasking is the One Against Adult Choice

LAGOS, NIGERIA — The 2025 theme of World No Tobacco Day, set by the World Health Organization, is "Unmasking the appeal: exposing industry tactics on tobacco and nicotine products." The Foundation for Consumer Freedom Advancement (FCFA) supports the goal of honest information for consumers. We also believe that goal is undermined when honest information is replaced with policy that flattens the difference between combustible cigarettes and the safer alternatives that exist today.

Across Africa, smokers who want to switch to less harmful products are increasingly being told the products are the same. The science says they are not. The international experience says they are not. African adults are not the exception that justifies pretending otherwise.

The Difference That Policy Keeps Erasing

Combustible cigarettes deliver nicotine through smoke produced by burning tobacco. The smoke contains thousands of chemical compounds, including dozens of known carcinogens. The health risk associated with smoking is, overwhelmingly, the risk of inhaling that combustion. Reduced-risk products such as e-cigarettes, oral nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco products deliver nicotine without combustion. They are not without risk, and FCFA does not claim they are. They are, however, materially less harmful than the cigarette they would otherwise replace for an adult smoker who would otherwise continue smoking.

That is not an industry talking point. It is the position taken by Public Health England, the United Kingdom's National Health Service, the Royal College of Physicians, the New Zealand Ministry of Health, and Sweden's experience over decades of snus availability. Sweden has the lowest tobacco-related mortality in the European Union, and is on track to officially become the first smoke-free country in the world. That outcome was reached by allowing adult smokers to switch to safer products under proper regulation, not by banning the alternatives.

What "Unmasking" Should and Should Not Mean

If the WHO theme means exposing predatory marketing to children, deceptive flavour designs that target minors, and industry messaging that obscures the real risks of smoking, FCFA agrees. Children should not be a market for any nicotine product. Honesty is owed to every consumer.

If the theme is used to justify regulatory frameworks that treat reduced-risk products as identical to cigarettes, restrict adult access to safer alternatives, or remove the only realistic pathway many adult smokers have to a less harmful product, that is not consumer protection. That is the suppression of consumer choice in the name of consumer protection. Those are not the same thing.

What FCFA Is Working On

This year, FCFA has engaged regulatory and standards bodies in Nigeria during the development of Nigerian Industrial Standards for alternative nicotine products. We have continued coalition work in Ghana with the Institute of Liberty, Policy and Innovation. We have engaged the South African legislative process on the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill. The work is for the same reason every year. African adults are capable of deciding for themselves what risks they are willing to accept. Policy should help them choose well, not choose for them.