Given that one of the larger concerns surrounding EVP use is nicotine intake, presenting groups that vape nicotine in various ways with and without cannabis may shed light on profiles of adults who are at higher risk for downstream health consequences associated with vaping both substances. Another concern involves the health implications for adults who indicate that they vape non-nicotine/non-cannabis e-liquid, warranting further investigation into this group.Nicotine alters normal brain development in adolescents and young adults, possibly impairing cognitive development and long-term functioning.  Cannabis use is linked to adverse health outcomes including impaired short-term memory and attention, and risk for cannabis dependence. To combat adolescent and young adult tobacco and cannabis use, health communication campaigns have been deployed in the past; however, their success in preventing use of these substances has varied.  Health communication strategists have turned to social media platforms to promote campaign ads,  target their intended audience  with tailored messages,  and track ad performance in real-time.  However, cannabis grow set up each social media platform offers unique user experiences and audience engagement with ads vary across platforms even for identical messages.

As such, characterizing platform-specific health communication strategies could be vital to enhance ad performance. For example, the United States Food and Drug Agency , Center for Tobacco Products  is charged with ‘identifying effective messages, message components and communication channels to prevent initiation and countering uptake of ENDS by youth’ and Snapchat provides one such communication channel to evaluate effective messages. . Snapchat is a popular platform among adolescents and young adults in the U.S. The platform allows its users to post ephemeral “snaps”  to their followers. While advertisers have taken advantage of Snapchat’s younger audience through targeted ads , and real-time metrics that track ad impressions, there has been no research on the content of tobacco and cannabis-related ads on the platform. This study used a publicly available library of ads from Snapchat in 2019, with the objective of content-analyzing tobacco and cannabis-related ads targeted towards two age-groups: adolescents  and young adults . By documenting themes, performance , and type of sponsoring organization , this study will inform future social media health education campaigns. This study characterized tobacco and cannabis-related ads targeted towards adolescents and young adults on Snapchat.

Health Consequences was a common theme among tobacco ads followed by Quitting and Industry Tactics. Health Consequences was a predominant theme among cannabis ads followed by Policy Advocacy and Financial and Legal Consequences.Government organizations sponsored none of the tobacco-related ads targeted at adolescents and none of the cannabis-related ads targeted at adolescents were sponsored by advocacy organizations, outdoor cannabis grow which may indicate future priority age groups for health education campaigns sponsored by these organizations. Insights from this study add to the growing literature documenting characteristics of tobacco and cannabis ads appearing on social media platforms. While this study found that Health Consequences and Quitting were predominant themes for tobacco-related ads, prior research, investigating tobacco-related ads on Facebook and Instagram, found that tobacco regulations, addiction, and flavors were common themes.  Additionally, this study used objective ad metrics such as Ad Impressions and Ad Spend, overcoming limitations from instrument and recall bias that were present in prior ad evaluations. 

Collectively, these studies demonstrate that data from publicly available social media ad libraries can be used to provide an understanding of ad performance and cost by theme and inform tobacco and cannabis use prevention strategies. For example, the US FDA Center for Tobacco Products could use evidence-based narrative health communication strategies to develop snaps  offering a meaningful narrative that could be a part of a series of other similar snaps in a campaign. For example, snaps could include narration of individuals’ personal experience with smoking and resulting health effects Similarly, nonprofit public health organizations can create health education campaigns that include snaps of adolescents sharing their experience with vape cessation support offered by these organizations. Campaigns supported federal agencies or advocacy organizations could also evaluate their campaign’s reach using similar methods described in this study. Tobacco and cannabis-related ads on Snapchat received impressions in the millions.