Instagram helps Brazilians dodge a national sales ban on vapes
On August 3, Love Disk, a tobacco and liquor shop, posted an ad of a saleswoman holding three vapes up to the camera on Instagram. “The little beloved ones have arrived home,” the caption read.
There was a serious problem with the ad: Love Disk is located in Brazil, where the sale, import, and advertising of e-cigarettes has been illegal since 2009.
But such endorsements have gone unchecked in Brazil as Meta’s content policies allow attempts to buy, sell, trade, gift, and ask for nicotine products by profiles run by “legitimate” brick-and-mortar stores. The use of e-cigarettes has risen sharply in the country in recent years, with sales partly driven by social media platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, according to a government report. Meanwhile, the Big Tobacco lobby in Brazil is pushing for their legalization, threatening to roll back decades of declining tobacco use.
“Today, we don’t have a legal framework to hold platforms accountable,” Stefania Schimaneski, who manages the registration and inspection of smoking products at Anvisa, Brazil’s health regulatory agency, told Rest of World.
