Researchers Reveal Pro-smoking Apps

Source from:  New Europe 10/25/2012

The tobacco industry is using smartphone apps to promote its products and tempt young people to start using cigarettes, researchers from the health journal Tobacco Control have found.

In February, the group started to analyse Apple App Store and Android Market, which are two of the largest sites that offer to users pro-smoking apps by only typing keywords such as smoke, cigarette, cigar, smoking or tobacco. During the investigation, researchers found 107 pro-smoking apps,which explicitly provide information about tobacco's brands, places where smokers can buy products, images of brands and cigarettes, and any other data related with the issue. Sixty-five of those tools were in the Apple App Store and the other 42, which were downloaded by 11 million users in one month, in the Android Market. Within the apps, researchers classified 48 as smoking stimulation and 42 as shop/brands. Enditem