Europe needs a more precise focus to address the tobacco industry’s “engineered architecture of addiction”, featuring flavoured tobacco and nicotine products with ever more sleek designs. As an early champion of global tobacco legislation, the region can reposition itself to lead again – including through updated European Union directives on tobacco product regulation, advertising and taxation.

Twenty-one years ago, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world’s first global health treaty and one of the EU’s earliest major public-health commitments, entered into force.

It has helped to drive a reduction in tobacco use, with over 120 million fewer people using tobacco worldwide and best-practice protections expanded to more than six billion people.

As a new WHO/ Europe report, published last year to mark the treaty’s 20th anniversary, shows, its core principles remain relevant –  perhaps even more so today, as new products and tobacco industry tactics disrupt public health progress in unprecedented ways.

Tobacco remains one of the world’s most lethal health hazards, killing more than seven million people globally each year, including an estimated 1.6 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke. 

The WHO’s European Region, with 53 member states, has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leader in tobacco use, as well as the global leader in growing e-cigarette use among youth. 

The scale is stark: in 2024 alone, 173 million adults and four million adolescents aged 13-15 were tobacco users, alongside 31.4 million adults and 4.2 million adolescents using e-cigarettes.  

What is increasingly evident today is that the danger is no longer confined to tobacco itself. It has shifted toward the engineered architecture of addiction – products designed to attract new consumers, sustain dependence and undermine public health.

Flavours, filters, and sleek designs for Gen Z and younger

The tobacco industry is much more than harvesting, curing, or rolling leaves. It now has sophisticated products and advertising machinery built to capture attention, personalise user experience, stay one step ahead of regulation and hook consumers long before they ever touch a cigarette.

The tobacco and nicotine industry now markets an expanding universe of products – from heated tobacco and e-cigarettes to “aromatic nose inhalers” and nicotine pouches. Most of these products contain nicotine in different forms and concentrations, flavours and all of them exploit desire, reward pathways and the psychological hooks of habit and dependence.

If, in the last century, cigarettes were marketed by images of rugged masculinity and reassuring doctors, today’s new generation of tobacco and nicotine products is packaged in joyful, playful social media posts attuned to millennials, Gen Z and younger audiences. 

There is bright packaging, unboxing videos, or lifestyle clips that blur the line between advertising and entertainment. Many play along, click, like and share. New products are being designed to attract children and young adolescents, mimicking candies and toys. The strategy remains the same: to make nicotine and tobacco products look modern, harmless, and desirable.

Much of this content is not presented as advertising at all. The addictive architecture of social media does the heavy lifting. Influencers trusted by millions of young followers may feature these products under the guise of authentic personal recommendations, while in reality contributing to the industry’s transnational marketing reach. Viral ads multiplied by trust is a very powerful combination that does much harm in the wrong hands.

This concerns me personally. As a father of two daughters, I can see how important social media is for them. It gives the feeling of emotional connection, belonging, and significance. And this is true for me as well – I can feel social media influencing my worldview and my work at WHO/ Europe every day.

Full implementation of Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

One of the most striking findings in the WHO/ Europe report is that the most powerful tobacco-control measures are already known and proven to work, but their adoption and proper implementation at country-level is lacking.

Since 2019, rates of adolescent e-cigarette use have increased in 22 of 25 EU countries reviewed, and in all of them, girls report higher use than boys. Tobacco use among women in the EU remains high and sharply contrasts with the global downward trend.

This is in line with the findings of the European Commission’s latest evaluation of the EU tobacco control framework, which highlights the rapid rise of novel tobacco and nicotine products — especially among young people — as a key and growing challenge.

All of this points to one conclusion: full implementation of the WHO FCTC is overdue. The EU’s existing directives – the Tobacco Products Directive, the Tobacco Advertising Directive, and the Tobacco Taxation Directive – must be updated and strengthened to deliver on the treaty’s commitments . 

Today’s major problems include uneven implementation, regulatory loopholes, and slow adaptation to new products and new realities of digital marketing –all influenced by the tobacco industry. A strong political commitment is necessary to overcome these challenges and change the trajectory of nicotine and tobacco use.

Europe can lead once again

By accelerating implementation, closing regulatory loopholes, modernizing legislative frameworks to address digital marketing, and applying effective price and tax measures, the EU can set a powerful global example and advance the vision of a Tobacco-Free Generation by 2040, an ambition set out in Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, and later re-iterated in the EU Safe Hearts Plan.

Twenty years on, the FCTC continues to provide a strong foundation, but today’s market realities call for its full implementation that is complemented by forward-looking measures.

As an early architect and champion of the FCTC, the EU is uniquely positioned to lead once again – and this leadership will be most effective if exercised without delay, ensuring that policy not only keeps pace with, but anticipates, emerging products and industry tactics.

Hans Henri Kluge is the regional director of the WHO/European Region.

Image Credits: Filter, WHO, WHO.