Nefely Taravira, Louis Laurence and Filippos T Filippidis Article 5.3 of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) explicitly recommends that parties should not form partnerships with or participate in activities of the tobacco industry. Although more than 180 signatories have ratified the FCTC, including the European Union (EU) and all […]
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Philip Morris and Vectura- an invasive growth
Nicholas Hopkinson Philip Morris International (PMI) products kill at least one million people per year. Its acquisition of Vectura, a company which specialises in inhaled medications, taken by many people who have lung disease caused or aggravated by smoking, is grotesque. The move has been widely condemned by professional and patient groups including the American […]
Tobacco control in Portugal: stagnating with partial indoor smoking bans
Teresa Leão and Henrique Barros In Portugal, one person dies every hour due to a smoking-related disease. In 2019, 13,559 individuals died from a smoking-related illness (11.7% of total deaths for the year), with smoking attributed as the top cause of age-standardized healthy life years lost. In addition, 15% of smoking-related deaths are caused by […]
WHO FCTC Article 5.3 – A vaccine for curbing the tobacco pandemic
Mary Assunta & Jennie Lyn Reyes A powerful tool to protect governments from tobacco industry interference remains underutilised, while the tobacco industry stepped up its meddling in health policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the main finding of the Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index (Index) which reviews government efforts in 80 countries to implement […]
PMI-funded Foundation for a Smoke-Free World: Searching for new President
John Baker On October 25 2021 the Board of the Philip Morris International (PMI)-funded Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW) announced that its President and Board Director Dr Derek Yach would no longer serve in this capacity, effective immediately. According to the FSFW website, Heidi Goldstein, General Counsel, and David Janazzo, Chief Finance Officer and […]
Is Tobacco Regulatory Science a predatory journal? Hell, yeah! – an Update.
Cristine Delnevo A previous blog post highlighted concerns regarding the recent sale of the journal Tobacco Regulatory Science and questioned whether the journal was likely now a predatory journal. Time would certainly tell. Now the wait is over and in my view, the answer is a resounding “Hell, yeah!” This week we saw the table […]
Euromonitor approaches tobacco control academics on behalf of Philip Morris International- funded Foundation for a Smoke-Free World
Karen Evans-Reeves and John Baker As many will be aware from an earlier blog post, in March 2019, the market research organisation Euromonitor International, which describes itself as “the world’s leading independent provider of strategic market research”, accepted funding from Phillip Morris International initiatives, namely the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World and PMI IMPACT. In the past […]
Smoke-Free Stadia: How far have we come?
Matthew Philpott As I write this blog today, it almost three months since I watched the relentless Giorgio Chiellini lift the Henri Delaunay trophy above his head after Italy beat England in a penalty shootout at Wembley to win EURO 2020. Whilst the final saw the curtain drawn on a month-long competition of 51 football […]
“BAT in Blood”: British American Tobacco in Belarus
Last month, the US, UK and Canada announced sanctions targeting individuals and entities understood to be financing Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. This legislation follows similar action from the EU in June. These sanctions build on reports of police violence against protesters, mass arrests and even torture, with a U.N. official comparing Belarus to a ‘totalitarian’ […]
In memory of Konstantin Krasovsky
The following obituary is reproduced with permission from the ENSP network. With much sadness we are writing about passing away of Konstantin Krasovsky, a distinguished member of our Network. Konstantin Krasovsky has been known in the world as one of the top public health specialists in tobacco field and worked for decades to make a […]