GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP)—Sleek-looking disposable e-cigarettes and candy-flavoured nicotine pouches are among a range of new products targeting young people and fuelling a new wave of tobacco and nicotine addiction, the WHO warned Monday.

Speaking at the opening of a global conference on tobacco control, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus decried that surging numbers of children were being drawn to the new products.

“Schools are the new frontline in the war against tobacco and nicotine, where companies are actively recruiting generations of addicts,” he warned.

A WHO report released last month estimated that nearly 15 million teens globally now use e-cigarettes, he told the 11th meeting of state parties to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

Tedros hailed the dramatic progress that had been made in recent decades in clamping down on the deadly habit, although more than eight million people globally are still estimated to die from tobacco-related diseases each year.

For the past 20 years, tobacco consumption among young people “has declined by one third globally”, he said, adding that this had prompted “tobacco manufacturers to develop new products to attract new customers”.

The UN health agency questions the tobacco industry’s marketing of vapes and other new products as safer alternatives to traditional tobacco products and as aids to stop smoking.

“There is no evidence of their net benefit for public health and mounting evidence of their harm,” Tedros said, decrying that such products are being used to recruit young smokers.

The recent WHO report, he pointed out, showed that “in 63 countries from which data are available, the prevalence of vaping among adolescents is on the average nine times higher than among adults”.

“Let’s be clear, the companies that make these products are not motivated by harm reduction or public health.

“They’re motivated by one thing and one thing only, gigantic profits for their shareholders.”

The WHO chief said his agency was calling on all countries to regulate nicotine pouches, e-cigarettes, heated tobacco “at least as strongly as they regulate conventional tobacco products”.

He welcomed that several countries had banned such products outright, stressing that “those that have not should use strict controls on flavours, packaging, marketing and sales protections against industry interference and enforcement of age restrictions”.