Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Health experts are warning that pro-smoking smartphone apps could tempt young people to start using cigarettes after new research found that dozens of them have been downloaded millions of times.
Researchers who uncovered the existence of such apps, some of which use cartoons, fear it is a new way for tobacco companies to exploit loopholes in restrictions on their marketing activities in order to promote their products.
Australian researchers, writing in the medical journal Tobacco Control, say they came across 107 apps that promoted smoking in some way when they checked the Apple and Android Market app stores in February, Sixty-five were in the Apple App Store and the other 42 in Android Market's equivalent. By that month a total of about 11m people used the 42 such apps held by Android Market.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/23/pro-smoking-smartphone-apps-tobacco-companies
Researchers who uncovered the existence of such apps, some of which use cartoons, fear it is a new way for tobacco companies to exploit loopholes in restrictions on their marketing activities in order to promote their products.
Australian researchers, writing in the medical journal Tobacco Control, say they came across 107 apps that promoted smoking in some way when they checked the Apple and Android Market app stores in February, Sixty-five were in the Apple App Store and the other 42 in Android Market's equivalent. By that month a total of about 11m people used the 42 such apps held by Android Market.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/23/pro-smoking-smartphone-apps-tobacco-companies