MAY 31
World No Tobacco Day Youth Statement
Young advocates from across all WHO regions released a joint statement calling on governments to ban flavours and end youth-targeted tobacco and nicotine marketing.
Past campaignWorld No Tobacco Day 2025Global
Unmasking the Tobacco Industry's Appeal
A coordinated youth campaign exposing how the tobacco industry uses flavours, digital marketing, lifestyle branding, and misleading claims to attract a new generation of young users.
About the Campaign
On World No Tobacco Day 2025, Global Youth Voices and its participating organizations launched a global campaign to unmask how the tobacco and nicotine industry designs, brands, and markets its products to young people. The campaign united youth advocates from every WHO region around shared demands for comprehensive bans on flavours, restrictions on digital marketing, and stronger enforcement of Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC.
Campaign Strategy
Campaign Objectives
This campaign aimed to:
- Expose the industry's use of flavours and design features that appeal to young people
- Demand comprehensive prohibitions on marketing, promotion, and sponsorship targeting youth
- Call for the removal of tobacco and nicotine product imagery from digital and social media spaces
- Hold governments accountable to WHO FCTC Article 5.3 by excluding industry from policymaking
- Mobilize young people to document and counter industry tactics in their own communities
Core Demands
- Flavours are the gateway — they mask harm and hook a new generation
- Marketing that reaches young people is marketing that targets them
- The industry adapts its appeal to every trend; policy must keep up
- Young people are not the problem — we are the solution to industry interference
Campaign Actions
Participating organizations and advocates contributed through:
- Published an open youth statement for World No Tobacco Day
- Ran a global social media campaign with youth-created content
- Collected youth stories and testimonials on first experiences with flavoured products
- Engaged national policymakers with calls to ban flavours and youth-targeted marketing
- Organized webinars and school-based awareness sessions across regions
- Translated and localized campaign materials into multiple languages
Progress & Updates
This section records campaign outputs, institutional responses, and verified developments as the campaign progresses.
MAY 2025
Youth Stories of Flavour Targeting
The campaign platform collected first-person stories from young people about how flavoured products and digital ads reached them, feeding evidence directly into advocacy messages.
JUNE 2025
Policy Dialogues on Digital Marketing
Regional policy dialogues with health ministries and regulators discussed closing gaps in digital marketing regulation and enforcing existing tobacco advertising bans.
Participating organizations
This campaign was developed and amplified with participating GYV organizations and partners.
Vital Strategies