In a new Health Affairs Forefront article, Linda Richter, Partnership to End Addiction’s Senior Vice President of Prevention Research and Policy, explains the need to continue tobacco control efforts to limit youth tobacco use, particularly given recent trends and environments.

Why it’s important: While cigarette smoking fell across nearly every age group in the U.S. 2021-2025, the rate among adolescents showed no change, despite prior decades-long declines in teen smoking. Teen smoking rates are very low, but adolescents are the group to keep our eyes on as they come of age at the intersection of a changing nicotine marketplace, renormalization of smoking in pop culture, and weakened tobacco control.

The details:

1. Changing nicotine environment: The rise of youth-appealing and accessible nicotine vapes and oral nicotine products has changed the tobacco product marketplace. Today’s children and early adolescents are exposed to high-potency nicotine through a much broader array of appealing products.
2. Renormalization of smoking: Smoking imagery is increasingly visible in pop culture. Young people today are immersed in a powerful media environment that is increasingly renormalizing smoking.
3. Weakened guardrails: Critical elements of the federal tobacco-control infrastructure are being weakened. Much of the regulatory infrastructure that led to historically low smoking rates (effective public education, tobacco regulation, smoking-cessation support) is being scaled back. The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control’s (CDC) “Tips from Former Smokers” campaign stopped airing last year after the office that ran it was downsized; the federal government withdrew proposals to prohibit menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars and reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes; and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized new flavored products and allowed certain unauthorized products to remain on the market.

The main point: Policymakers should maintain robust tobacco prevention and public education efforts, reinstate restrictions on most flavored nicotine products, advance product standards that limit nicotine content, and strengthen oversight of the evolving market for youth-appealing products.