Research and resources
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Report
Tobacco’s starring role
Tobacco imagery maintained its recurring and often starring role in popular on-screen entertainment in 2021
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Topic
Emerging tobacco products
As the tobacco product marketplace evolves, new products are emerging that deliver nicotine in different ways. These products include e-cigarettes like JUUL and heat-not-burn products like IQOS, and they typically come in many youth-appealing flavors.
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Topic
Traditional tobacco products
Traditional tobacco products — cigars, little cigars and cigarillos, chewing tobacco, snuff, hookah and, of course, cigarettes, including menthol and organic varieties — continue to harm millions of people, as smoking remains the country’s leading cause of preventable death and disease.
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Targeted communities
Tobacco use disproportionately affects many populations — including people in low-income communities, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ individuals, women, youth, members of the military and those with mental illness — who have a long and documented history of being targeted by the tobacco industry.
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Topic
Smoking by region
The massive decline in the overall U.S. smoking rate disguises a persistent problem. Many communities have not experienced a significant reduction in tobacco use, and smoking rates vary widely by geographic region. Many of these regions make up what we call “Tobacco Nation,” where smoking rates are on par with some of the world’s most tobacco-dependent countries.
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Topic
Quitting smoking / vaping
Quitting information and resources are in high demand. Most smokers say they want to quit and the youth e-cigarette use epidemic has created a major need for knowledge on how to quit vaping.
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Harmful effects of tobacco
Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the country. Even more, tobacco use isn't just a health issue for smokers — it affects the environment, the economy and the health of nonsmokers through secondhand smoke.
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Tobacco prevention efforts
We know what works in tobacco prevention: evidence-based strategies, including education campaigns like truth, tobacco control policies that restrict exposure and youth access to tobacco, taxes, smoke-free places, graphic warning labels and funding for prevention and intervention programs, as well as the activism efforts that propel these measures forward.
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Topic
Tobacco industry marketing
Tobacco companies invest almost $1 million each hour to recruit new users and retain existing ones through marketing and advertising products. Retail environments continue to be the tobacco industry's top promotional outlet, accounting for more than 90% of its $9 billion annual marketing budget.
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Topic
Tobacco in pop culture
Tobacco imagery in pop culture — including TV, video games, movies and social media — contributes to the normalization of smoking and continues to portray it positively, as a normal social behavior and as glamorous, rebellious and edgy.
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Topic
Substance use
Given the toll of the national opioid crisis and its adjacency to our existing work, we are lending our prevention and public health education expertise to the national opioid epidemic. Research ashows that exposure to the highly addictive chemical nicotine, found in tobacco products, can make adolescent brains more susceptible to other addictive substances.
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