Aishwarya Ashok, Upendra Bhojani, Shivam Kapoor and Pranay Lal South Asia experiences unprecedented levels of tobacco industry interference and the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the sheer vulnerability of the region. When Bangladesh was on the brink of a nationwide lockdown, two Transnational Tobacco Companies (TTCs) lobbied the government to continue cigarette production claiming them to be […]
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Bangladesh: Bidi Industry Forces Workers to Demand Tax Reduction
ABM Zubair In Bangladesh, the bidi industry has been capitalising on the financial vulnerabilities of its workers to shield itself against any taxation or tobacco control measures. The Bidi industry has been criticized for abusing human rights by offering extremely low wages, the average in Bangladesh being US$ 0.77-1.57 per day according to a 2019 […]
The Tobacco Enforcement Reporting Movement (TERM): An Early Warning System to Track Digital Tobacco Marketing
Nandita Murukutla, Sharan Kuganesan, Namrata Kumar, Vaishakhi Mallik, and Rebecca Perl At the World Health Organization’s 150th Executive Board meeting, in January 2022, the Director-General remarked that 60 countries are on track to reduce tobacco use as per agreed targets. While this is undoubtedly good news, significant challenges persist advancing tobacco control measures among the […]
A Q&A with Tobacco Control’s Editor-in-Chief, Professor Ruth Malone
To mark the 30th anniversary of the first publication of Tobacco Control journal we asked current Editor-in-Chief (EiC), Professor Ruth Malone, about her background, what being EiC really means day-to-day, where she would like to take the journal during her remaining tenure and finally, for authors, some key advice if you are thinking of preparing […]
New Zealand: Ground-breaking action plan may help country achieve its Smokefree 2025 goal
Richard Edwards, Janet Hoek and Andrew Waa On December 9 2021, Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall launched the New Zealand (NZ) Government’s action plan to achieve its Smokefree 2025 goal. The Action Plan responded to consultation on a discussion document published in April 2021 that outlined draft proposals. The NZ government committed to a […]
Will a new FIA President help Formula One Quit Tobacco?
Phil Chamberlain As the season ends, recent trends suggest Formula One will be congratulating itself on record global audiences through 2021. Arguably, the sport’s wider impact is not as healthy. STOP published a report this year that revealed how Philip Morris International (PMI) and British American Tobacco (BAT) are using their sponsorship of the Ferrari […]
Philip Morris International’s partnerships with local authorities in Europe violate Article 5.3 of the FCTC
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
“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’ […]