🔵 The boom in fruit flavour cigarettes is driving youth smoking in Latin America—despite the tobacco industry's promises

Health

While much of the world wrestles with regulations around vapes and their many flavours, Philip Morris International (PMI) and British American Tobacco (BAT) have been pumping flavours into conventional cigarettes and fighting efforts to ban the products throughout Latin America, shows a joint investigation by The Examination and the media outlets Salud Con Lupa (Peru), and LaBot (Chile).Featuring splashy packaging, breezy names, and flavours that taste like blueberry, apple, or menthol, new varieties of cigarettes—known as click, capsule, or crush ball cigarettes (a capsule is crushed to use them, making a clicking sound)—are soaring in popularity in Latin America (fig 1).

BMJ     Nov 21, 2024