We have a tobacco industry that is spending $9 billion a year marketing their products—we don’t need to give them a dime more.

Robin Koval

Categorized in : Health

We know video games are much more immersive (than movies) and frequently played by young people ... those who play games spend even more time playing them than (time spent) on social media, the influence (of video games) might even be stronger (than movies), both because of large exposures from repeated play and because of the highly personal, active nature of video game play.

A lot of young people don't like smoking. ... I don't think there's a strong majority of kids saying 'Put more tobacco in these games, we really like that,' i'm kind of surprised. Why aren't people designing games to reflect thoughts of young people?

These are the cool characters, the more powerful characters. by Robin Koval

These are the cool characters, the more powerful characters.

There's an opportunity for parents and the gaming community itself to make it known that these games are tons of fun to play without having to include smoking in them.

These are the kids who are zero to 19 now and, unlike the millennials who grew up in a great economy and better times, these younger kids, they're really practical, like, at the age of 11, they're planning their careers. They care about money, so I think the future looks bright in that regard.

There's more and more of a pushback against the whole 'everybody gets a trophy,' parents going on job interviews with kids ... to say 'You know what? Let your kids take responsibility. Be there in the background if they really need you but it's good for them to fail once in a while,'.

We wanted to debunk a few things here, one,( smoking) doesn't make you more attractive, and we know the thing that young people care about most is connecting with other people, especially for romantic opportunities, and that social smoking, whatever you call it, light smoking, intermittent smoking, is smoking.

Young people just don't understand that a little cigar is just as dangerous as a regular cigarette, it's very concerning and really, really dangerous. ... We know for sure that combustible tobacco will kill you.

One of the things we see is a belief among young people that if you only smoke occasionally, light smoking or intermittent smoking, that somehow that's not as dangerous.

The advertising is certainly working very hard to make [e-cigarette smoking] glamorous and sexy, and the numbers that we’re seeing certainly suggest that for a lot of young people, it’s a new, trendy, cool thing to try.

We fully expect the tobacco industry, as they have done in the past, to try to delay further with lawsuits, there is still a long road ahead, but this is a very important first step.

This is long-awaited. The evidence has been there for years.

The FDA is supposed to be about a year, and we hope The FDA will keep to that timetable. They've missed a lot of other timetables.