Fighting flavoured cigarettes in Latin America
This event, as part of the REMAP Project, was held online in January 2023. The event involved a series of presentations about tobacco use and tobacco control in Latin America, the promotion of tobacco products, the threat of flavoured cigarettes, and opportunities to reduce the appeal of cigarettes in Latin America.
The event, featuring the REMAP team, can be seen on YouTube (https://youtu.be/GZMn7Nr0qQI). The webinar includes discussions on tobacco consumption in Latin America (Alfonso Zavaleta), tobacco control in Latin America (Joaquin Barnoya), how tobacco companies promote their products (Raul Mejia), and retail tobacco marketing and tobacco industry efforts to oppose regulations (Inti Barrientos).
There are also presentations on the role of flavoured cigarettes, including flavour capsule cigarettes, in smoking initiation and behaviour (Jim Thrasher) and on dissuasive cigarettes (Crawford Moodie). Another important part of the REMAP project is capacity building. Blanca Llorente and Isa Uny explained why this is important and Erick Antonio Ochoa (from Salud Justa in Mexico) discussed the need to strengthen tobacco control in Latin America from a Non-governmental organisation perspective.
SRNT Conference 2024
The Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) annual conference was held in Edinburgh in March 2024. The conference was attended by more than 1,000 people. The conference included a number of posters and presentations from the REMAP team.
The researchers on the REMAP project presented preliminary findings on the first study of the project, a retail monitor and pack collection, which was conducted between April and July 2023. The team used a bespoke codebook to explore the availability and marketing of tobacco (including flavour cigarettes, rolling tobacco, and heated tobacco products) and nicotine products (e-cigarettes) at over 2,000 points-of-sale in Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.
Mariel Palacios presented findings on the marketing of traditional flavour cigarettes and flavour capsule cigarettes at points-of-sale in the four countries. Eva Chanamé discussed the visibility, availability and price of single cigarettes. Emilia Elicabe talked about the presence of rolling tobacco and accessories across the four countries, and Gustavo Dávila the sale and advertising of heated tobacco products and e-cigarettes. Finally, María Belén Arnaudo discussed compliance with point-of-sale regulations in Argentina. The talks are shown in the video below.
El Congreso de Investigación en Salud Pública (CONGISP) 2025
The CONSGIP public health conference was held in Cuernavaca (Mexico) in March 2025. The conference included two symposia from the REMAP team. In the first, researchers on the project presented findings from 2023 about the retail marketing of tobacco and nicotine products in Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. In the second, the researchers presented preliminary findings from focus groups with adolescents conducted in these four countries in 2024.
Carlos Aguilar started by discussing how adolescents in Mexico view flavour capsule cigarettes. Abel Limache then discussed the response of adolescents in Peru to the inclusion of warnings on cigarette sticks, exploring warning themes targeted at this population. Aiken Chew also presented on dissuasive cigarettes, exploring how adolescents in Guatemala perceive cigarettes that are an unappealing colour and/or include warnings with or without a toxic symbol. To end the session, María Belén Arnaudo discussed how youth view rolling tobacco in Argentina, where this product is now widely available.
