Andy SL Tan and Shaleen Title Big Tobacco is increasingly poised to become a significant player in the new legal cannabis industry and potentially crowd out smaller businesses. In January 2016, Philip Morris International invested $20 million in Israel-based Syqe Medical that developed a medical cannabis inhaler. In June 2018, Britain’s Imperial Brands invested through […]
Category: Tobacco Industry
Australia: Big Tobacco wins in defeat of T21 age bill
Kathryn Barnsley An innovative legislative reform in Tasmania, Australia has been defeated, after what appears to be tobacco industry interference via third parties, with support from vaping lobby groups. A 2018 bill to gradually phase in and raise the minimum legal sales age of e-cigarettes and tobacco to 21 years (T21) now law in […]
Malaysia: did the tobacco industry collaborate with media to defeat tax increase?
Mohamad Haniki Nik Mohamed It has been five years since Malaysia last had a tobacco tax increase. The 2021 budget, announced in November 2020, was an opportunity to correct this shortcoming and use one of the most cost-effective measures available to governments to reduce smoking. Instead, tobacco taxes remained static for the sixth year. The […]
Monitoring and Exposing Tobacco Industry Interference in U.S. Public Policy
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
COVID-19 and smoking: resources, research and news
This page provides resources, research and news reports about COVID19 and smoking, vaping and other tobacco products for the information of health professionals, researchers and the general public. (Last updated 9 September 2020) Tobacco Control & BMJ publications COVID-19, smoking and inequalities: a study of 53 002 adults in the UK “…current smoking was independently […]