As we recognize National Prevention Week, it’s worth asking what stands in the way of continuing the truly impressive progress our nation has seen in having more kids delay substance use until they’re older.
The throughline across the main addictive products that are most commonly used by young people – nicotine, alcohol, and marijuana – is that they increasingly are being designed and marketed to blatantly look and taste appealing to young people.
Designing and marketing products to appeal to youth, while getting influencers to promote the products as beneficial and glamorous, is the oldest trick in the addictive corporate industries’ playbooks.
Today’s marketplace is saturated with flavored addictive products, from candy-like nicotine vapes and nicotine pouches; to flavored marijuana bud, vapes, and edibles; to brightly packaged sweet and bubbly alcoholic beverages. With skillful marketing, enormous budgets, and a pliant regulatory framework, it is no wonder that for most young people, first exposure to these substances is no longer a harsh cigarette or bitter alcoholic drink. Instead, it is a sweet, discreet, highly engineered product packaged to feel modern, fun, and relatively harmless.
Products that taste sweet and look like candy, soda, or sleek tech products feel less harmful to adolescents, whose brains are still developing and who are particularly vulnerable to addiction. Flavors lower the barrier to experimentation long before young people fully understand the physical health, mental health, and addiction risks involved.
Even popular media personalities are calling attention to the dangers of this trend. John Oliver recently highlighted the explosion of flavored addictive substances being sold right next to candy, gum, and sodas in gas stations and convenience stores across the country, sometimes promoted as wellness or performance products.
In addition to flavored vapes, edibles, and nicotine pouches, stores now commonly sell intoxicating hemp-derived THC products, synthetic kratom, “galaxy gas,” tianeptine (sometimes referred to as “gas station heroin”), and other highly potent and addictive substances designed to appear benign and that exist within regulatory gray areas.
And while the conversation recently has been about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision to reduce regulatory restrictions on flavored vaping products that had been highly effective in reducing youth vaping, this conversation is bigger than any one product category. It is about an entire ecosystem of addictive products competing for the attention, curiosity, and long-term loyalty of young consumers, and residing within regulatory loopholes where oversight is limited and dangerous marketing practices are virtually unrestrained.
And heading into summer – with warm weather, graduations, barbecues, concerts, beaches, and social gatherings – young people are likely to face increased exposure to marketing and easier access to these products, alongside more relaxed adult attitudes and reduced supervision when school is out of session.
For parents, educators, health professionals, and policymakers, the challenge is not simply fighting one substance at a time. It is recognizing the common recruitment strategies these industries use: flavors, appealing packaging, influencer marketing, and normalization. And it requires strengthening the protective factors we know help young people thrive.
Real prevention means more than telling young people to “just say no” or putting all the burden on parents to “rein in their kids.” Effective prevention, regardless of the target substance, means creating environments where addictive products are not engineered to be irresistible; disguised to appear harmless; and normalized, glamorized, and accessible wherever young people turn.
This National Prevention Week, we should fully commit to implementing policies and prevention strategies that put youth health ahead of corporate profit.
Linda Richter, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President, Prevention Research & Policy
Published
May 2026