More than 100 public health and anti-tobacco organizations are calling on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snap to take “swift action” to curb advertising of tobacco products on their platforms.
The organizations’ letter to the firms cited a recent Reuters report documenting how cigarette maker Philip Morris International has used young personalities on Instagram to sell a new “heated tobacco” product called IQOS.
The groups said social media firms are not doing enough to regulate “influencers” on their platforms who are hired by companies to promote nicotine products.
No law specifically prevents online tobacco or e-cigarette marketing, but social media firms have policies limiting it. The health groups said in their letter that the use of online personalities creates a “loophole” in those policies and allows “rampant marketing” of tobacco and other nicotine products to youth.
Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, are studying the issue “to understand how we can improve,” said spokeswoman Stephanie Otway.
The platforms currently ban brand advertising of tobacco products, Otway said. Their policies require any sponsored “influencer” posts that explicitly recommended buying tobacco products be restricted only to people over 18.
But the same restriction would not apply to posts by paid influencers that depict tobacco products favorably without explicitly saying that people should buy them, Otway said.
In making policy for a billion users, the company has to draw lines between advertising, promotional posts and “someone having an opinion,” Otway said.
Twitter spokeswoman Elizabeth Luke said the company prohibits “the promotion of tobacco products, accessories and brands worldwide” but declined to comment on whether that includes influencers paid to feature tobacco products on their accounts.
Reuters identified several Twitter posts over the last two years from influencers who posted photographs with IQOS devices or linked back to Instagram accounts promoting the product. Twitter did not comment on the posts identified by Reuters.
Snap Inc did not respond to requests for comment.
The more than 100 organizations from 48 countries that signed the letter, which was sent to the companies Friday and publicly released Wednesday, included the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the Japan Society for Tobacco Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Reuters earlier this month documented how Philip Morris had used young social media influencers, including a 21-year-old woman in Russia, to promote its IQOS device. The company’s internal marketing standards prohibit it from using youth-oriented celebrities or “models who are or appear to be under the age of 25.”
Philip Morris said May 10 that it launched an internal investigation and suspended all “product-related digital influencer actions globally” after Reuters sought the company’s comment on examples of Instagram posts and photographs depicting young, hip women advertising IQOS.
However, all of the posts referenced in the Reuters report remained online as of Tuesday evening. In addition, Reuters has identified new examples of Instagram content featuring young people with the IQOS posted in the days since Philip Morris said it had suspended its influencer campaigns.
