article by Simon Chapman, University of Sydney I recently noticed a tweet from @CareersatBAT about how British American Tobacco South Africa had packed 200,000 meals of donated food for the Million Meal Challenge being run by Stop Hunger Now Southern Africa. BAT South Africa is stamping out hunger by packing 200k meals as part of […]
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Health ministers from around the world agree plain tobacco packaging priority
In excellent news for public health and bad news for big tobacco, Yahoo! news reports: Ministers from 10 countries gathered in Paris Monday to launch a common drive to introduce plain cigarette packaging with the aim of stubbing out high smoking rates among young people. Representatives from nations as far afield as New Zealand, Australia, […]
World Head & Neck Cancer Day, 27 July: A call for effective tobacco & areca nut control
Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi, Professor and Head and Neck Surgeon at Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, India. Head and cancers are a major cause of death and disability globally, and the most common cancer in low-income countries. To draw the world’s attention to effective care and control of head and neck cancers, the International Federation of Head […]
Big tobacco, Interpol & Codentify: potential problems with industry product tracking systems
In 2013, Tobacco Control published an article which examined Codentify, an industry tracking and tracing standard (click here for open access full text). It traces events from 2011, when Interpol accepted a substantial donation from Philip Morris International. Shortly afterwards, in 2012, Interpol announced the creation of the Interpol Global Register (IGR) to help ensure authenticity […]
Jamaica: United Way charity under pressure over tobacco industry links
Tobacco industry corporate philanthropy and social responsibility has been under the international spotlight recently with the revelation that the American Red Cross continues to accept tobacco industry donations, despite concerns of the International Red Cross that US Red Cross risks damaging the global reputation of the network. Accepting tobacco industry donations is particularly problematic for charitable […]
Victory for tobacco’s victims. Victory for public health. Victory for society.
by Cynthia Callard Directrice, Service d’information sur les procès du tabac Association pour la santé publique du Québec “Knowingly exposing people to the type of dangers that the Companies knew cigarettes represented without any precaution signals being sent is beyond irresponsible at any time of the Class Period. It is also intentionally negligent.” Justice Brian […]
Canada: Smokers awarded $15 billion in damages as tobacco companies ordered to pay
Quebec, Canada. Three tobacco companies have been ordered to pay $15 billion in damages after losing a historic court case. In making his judgement, THE HONORABLE BRIAN RIORDAN, J.S.C, wrote: “these companies colluded among themselves in order to impede the public from learning of health related information about smoking, a collusion that continued for many decades […]
World No Tobacco Day 2015
Eliminating the illicit trade in tobacco would generate an annual tax windfall of US$ 31 billion for governments, improve public health, help cut crime and curb an important revenue source for the tobacco industry. On the World No Tobacco Day on 31 May, WHO calls Member States to sign the “Protocol to Eliminate the Illicit […]
This artistic ad from Thailand will make you think…and gasp
The opening of this video is intriguing – thick black ink dropping into water, then a paintbrush slowly making a bold black stroke across canvas. The paintbrush has been dipped in what looks like a high quality art paint jar…but it is no ordinary ink. As the ad states, it is the life’s work of a man who spent 50 […]
Urgent action to amend Austria’s tobacco control laws
Prof. Manfred Neuberger writes: Since 2007 Austria has received the poorest score on the Tobacco Control Scale. While smoking prevalence and tobacco consumption decreased on average in the European Union, an opposite trend has occurred in Austria. Child smoking has increased dramatically since the 1990s. Cigarettes are available around the clock in thousands of vending […]