Nicotine is an addictive chemical found primarily in tobacco plants, cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco, and nearly all e-cigarettes.
According to the American Lung Association, nicotine is as addictive as heroin or cocaine, while vaping involves inhaling and exhaling aerosols produced by an e-cigarette or similar device.
These aerosols, often mistaken for harmless water vapour, contain fine particles, many of which carry toxic chemicals linked to heart disease, respiratory illnesses, and cancer.
The tobacco and allied industries generally promote vaping as part of their tobacco harm-reduction strategy for individuals wishing to quit smoking.
The World Health Organisation has estimated that over seven million people die each year due to tobacco use. This includes deaths from smoking and all other tobacco products.
About 1.6 million of these deaths are among non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke. The report also showed that tobacco kills up to half of all its users who don’t quit.
In addition to this, tobacco has been known to harm almost every part of the body. Some of the diseases caused or worsened by tobacco include cancer, heart and blood vessel diseases, lung diseases and smoking during pregnancy has been known to increase risks like low birth weight and lifelong health issues in babies.
Beyond health, tobacco also impacts societies economically. Many of the 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries, where health systems are less able to cope with tobacco-related diseases.
Household spending on tobacco can divert money from essentials like food and shelter, increasing poverty and inequality.
‘Aggressively normalised’
According to the founder of the Centre for Development and Reproductive Health, Daniel Oshi, the harm-reduction strategy encourages smokers to switch from high-risk combustible cigarettes to vapes and heated tobacco devices, which he describes as “safer nicotine products.”
However, the WHO and public health advocates in Nigeria and the diaspora have dismissed Oshi’s claim as misleading, describing it as a deceptive marketing strategy by the industry.
CAPPA’s Executive Director, Akinbode Oluwafemi, has raised alarm over the growing popularity of emerging nicotine products among young Nigerians, warning that they are expanding rather than reducing addiction rates.
Oluwafemi told Sunday PUNCH that the products, often marketed as safer alternatives to traditional cigarettes, are failing to serve their intended purpose as cessation tools for long-term adult smokers.
Instead, he noted, the products are being “aggressively normalised” among young people, many of whom have never previously smoked or used nicotine in any form.
According to Oluwafemi, this trend is widening the nicotine market by introducing a new generation to addiction rather than shrinking it by helping existing smokers quit.
Speaking on CAPPA’s latest report, titled ‘New Smoke Trap: Emerging Nicotine and Tobacco Products, Youth Exposure and Policy Gaps in Nigeria,’ the Executive Director said the study was conducted between October and December 2025.
He said the study documented 781 nicotine- and tobacco-related products in Lagos, Enugu, and the Federal Capital Territory. Of these, 573 were classified as new and emerging nicotine and tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, commonly known as vapes, nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco devices.
Oluwafemi noted that these new-generation nicotine products are freely circulating across Nigeria’s retail and digital markets, exploiting regulatory loopholes and increasing youth exposure to addiction risks.
“Most critically, our findings demonstrate that in Nigeria, these emerging products are not primarily serving as bridges for entrenched adult smokers seeking to quit. Instead, they are being aggressively normalised among young people, many of whom have never previously smoked or engaged with nicotine in any form.
“This trend expands the overall market for addiction rather than contracting it. The products are now highly visible in supermarkets, embedded in nightlife environments, and aggressively promoted across digital platforms disproportionately accessed by young people, thereby normalising nicotine consumption within everyday youth culture,” he said.
Regulatory loopholes
Oluwafemi explained that the dangerous health and economic harms of tobacco use are widely acknowledged and that, over the years, countries have developed comprehensive tobacco control laws to shield citizens from the devastating consequences of smoking.
These efforts, he said, began with the adoption of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
He also said Nigeria, for instance, domesticated the treaty through the National Tobacco Control Act and later strengthened it with the National Tobacco Control Regulations.
He added that these instruments introduced excise taxes, graphic health warnings, smoke-free public spaces, and advertising restrictions targeting combustible cigarettes.
According to him, the industry has repackaged addiction as “innovation,” presenting sleek electronic devices, flavoured nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco gadgets as reduced-harm alternatives.
He noted that many of these products are marketed as “tobacco-free” because they contain synthetic or laboratory-made nicotine, thereby exploiting another gap in existing laws.
Oluwafemi stressed that synthetic nicotine is pharmacologically identical to tobacco-derived nicotine and carries the same health consequences.
He further explained that for adolescents and young adults, whose brains are still developing, the risks are even more severe and include impaired attention, learning deficits, heightened impulsivity, and increased vulnerability to lifelong addiction.
Youths at risk
The Chief Executive Officer and President of Vital Strategies, Mary-Ann Etiebet, warned that the tobacco industry continues to recruit unwitting victims to sustain profits and replace the millions of consumers lost annually to disease and premature death.
She said cigarettes are no longer the sole vehicle for nicotine delivery and that emerging nicotine products now carry the same commercial ambition, repackaged as innovation and framed as solutions to smoking.
“If these products are truly intended to help long-term adult smokers stop using tobacco, why is the industry investing so aggressively in digital platforms and youth-heavy markets, particularly in Africa, home to the world’s youngest populations?” she asked.
She noted that more than 70 per cent of Nigeria’s population is under the age of 30 and that, as the continent’s most populous nation, the country represents a vast and lucrative market for the tobacco industry.
“It’s not about securing the future of our youth; it’s about securing the future of the industry. We’ve been here before. The tobacco industry’s playbook is not new. It has a long history of placing commercial interests above human life. As we have seen, these new products target youth, create entry points, lower social barriers to consumption, and increase the risk of long-term dependency,” she said.
The founding director of the Africa Centre for Tobacco Industry Monitoring and Policy Research at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, Lekan Ayo-Yusuf, situated Nigeria’s experience with emerging nicotine products within a broader global trend.
Ayo-Yusuf said the rapid expansion of these products is not necessarily due to a complete absence of regulation but rather to weaknesses within existing regulatory systems.
He warned that unless policymakers update regulations to address evolving nicotine products, nicotine use, especially among young people, will continue to rise.
He urged Nigeria to regulate nicotine broadly, not just tobacco, noting that countries that adopted product-neutral laws covering all nicotine delivery systems were able to close loopholes before markets became established.
Ayo-Yusuf also advocated online marketing restrictions to shield young people from exposure to nicotine products.
“Nigeria has an opportunity to apply that lesson now rather than later. Protection must extend to digital environments. Age verification must be meaningful, not merely symbolic. Product presentation must be assessed through a youth-protection lens,” he said.
He faulted the industry’s claims that its new and emerging products are responsible for declining smoking rates in several countries.
“We are seeing selective global examples used to promote harm-reduction messaging. Yet international evidence shows that smoking declines were driven primarily by comprehensive policies, including taxation, advertising bans, warnings, and smoke-free laws, not product substitution alone.
“With a smoking prevalence of less than five per cent in Nigeria and less than 10 per cent in most African countries, coupled with a large youth population, the country and the region need to double down on harm prevention, not harm reduction,” he told Sunday PUNCH.
Strengthening nicotine laws
Oluwafemi emphasised that the CAPPA report identified fragmented institutional approaches to the new threat in Nigeria.
He said some agencies treat new nicotine products primarily as trade commodities subject to standards regulation rather than as public health risks.
He warned that this divergence creates room for the industry to weaken oversight, threaten Nigeria’s tobacco control gains, and expose a new generation to nicotine dependence.