Nichelle Gray, Kathleen Hoke and Doug Matheny As the United States and the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to recognize underlying issues that still drastically impair public health. Tobacco use remains the leading cause of disease and early death in the U.S., accounting for 480,000 deaths annually, including 41,000 from secondhand […]
Category: Legislation and Policy
Spain: Civil Rights and Public Health Organizations Press Government for a Tobacco Endgame by 2030
Laurent Huber, Ubaldo Cuadrado García de Arboleya, Raquel Fernández Megina and Leonardo Visconti More than twenty civil rights associations and public health organizations in Spain have backed a Declaration asking the Spanish Government for a Tobacco Endgame by 2030. The goal is ambitious: to decrease smoking prevalence in Spain to under 5% by 2030. The […]
Tobacco industry lobbies Bangladesh Government Agency to champion its business during COVID-19 pandemic
ABM Zubair Bangladesh has seen an unprecedented level of tobacco industry interference during the COVID-19 crisis. The tobacco industry in Bangladesh, dominated by two transnational tobacco companies, British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB) and Japan Tobacco International (JTI), has exploited the ongoing pandemic to protect its cigarette business. While publicly building their image by making donations […]
US Food and Drug Administration Sued Over Inaction on Menthol Cigarettes
Kelsey Romeo-Stuppy The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is being sued over their inaction on menthol cigarettes. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and our colleagues at The African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council (AATCLC) are calling on the court to require the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to fulfill their mandate and stop […]
China’s e-cigarette manufacturers facing uncertain future
Ross MacKenzie, Jennifer Fang and Julia Smith China’s electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) industry accounts for close to 90% of global production. Based in Shenzhen in Guangdong province, an estimated 3,900 manufacturers employed some 2 million people in 2018 and reported sales of 33.7bn yuan (US$ 4.8bn) and exports worth 28.7bn yuan (US$ 4bn). Figures for […]
The two faces of the tobacco industry during the COVID-19 pandemic
Mateusz Zatoński, Anna B. Gilmore, Thomas R. Hird Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020, the world’s major tobacco companies have geared their CSR efforts to present themselves as allies of public health in the fight against the virus. For example, in Georgia on 23-26 March […]
Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control & the COVID19 Pandemic
Stella Aguinaga Bialous & Becky Freeman Article 5.3 implementation guidelines of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) remind all parties to protect public health against the “commercial or other vested interests” of the tobacco industry. The guidelines recognize a “fundamental and irreconcilable” conflict of interest between tobacco industry ambitions and public health policy […]
Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking: A Potential Conduit of COVID-19
Mohammad Ebrahimi Kalan, Ziyad Ben Taleb, Mehdi Fazlzadeh, Kenneth D Ward, Wasim Maziak On New Year’s Eve 2019, the outbreak of a novel infectious respiratory disease (known as Coronavirus disease 2019; COVID-19) was reported in several patients with a history of exposure to the Huanan seafood market, in multiple hospitals in the city of Wuhan, […]
World: Tribute to Professor Teh-wei Hu, health and tobacco control economist
Last month, the global tobacco control community lost one of its great intellects. Professor Teh-wei Hu passed away on 3 February 2020, following a short illness. Professor Hu was an economist whose expertise and accomplishments helped to establish tobacco taxes as one of the most effective measures to reduce smoking. In a career spanning 50 […]
Foundation for a Smoke Free World is not complementary to public health efforts – it’s undermining them
Heather Lusardi, Anna Gilmore, Ulysses Dorotheo The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW), established with almost US $1 billion from Philip Morris International, is essentially operating as a front group for Philip Morris International’s (PMI) interests. Unsurprisingly, therefore, overtures to the public health community have been repeatedly, firmly and publicly rejected: WHO has made clear […]