Commentary on the launch of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World

Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva September 2017 saw the launch of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, which describes itself as “an independent, non-profit organization created to accelerate global efforts to reduce health impacts and deaths from smoking, with the goal of ultimately eliminating smoking worldwide”. The creation of such an organization would usually […]

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A “Frank Statement” for the 21st Century?

Ruth E. Malone, Simon Chapman, Prakash C. Gupta, Rima Nakkash, Tih Ntiabang, Eduardo Bianco, Yussuf Saloojee, Prakit Vathesatogkit, Laurent Huber, Chris Bostic, Pascal Diethelm, Cynthia Callard, Neil Collishaw, Anna B. Gilmore The surprise announcement by the former head of the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative, Derek Yach, that he would head a newly-established organization […]

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Fake news: is smoking really increasing in Australia?

Author:  Simon Chapman AO This blog post originally appeared on Doctor Portal and is published here with permission. ON 14 August, 2017, The Australian newspaper ran a story guaranteed to go viral. The headline screamed: “More smokers lighting up, despite the costs”. The journalist, Adam Creighton, who has, grotesquely, written about tobacco control being like […]

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A missed opportunity: The US Helsinki Commission hearing on the illicit tobacco trade in the OSCE region

Benoît Gomis, Kelley Lee, Ross MacKenzie benoitg@sfu.ca   On 19 July 2017, the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) – also known as the ‘Helsinki Commission’ – held a hearing on the illicit tobacco trade in the Organization for Security Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) region. The Helsinki Commission, an independent US government […]

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India: steep decline in tobacco consumption in India reported in second Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS 2017)

Authors: Chaturvedi Pankaj , Sarin Ashima, Seth Sanjay, Gupta PC On 8th June 2017, results from the second Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS 2) of India were released. GATS is a global standard for systematically monitoring adult tobacco use and tracking key tobacco control indicators. India is the world’s largest democracy, and the second largest […]

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New Zealand to have world’s first smoke-free military by 2020

New Zealand has kicked off World No Tobacco Day by announcing a plan for its defence force to become the world’s first smoke-free military by 2020. Initiatives to achieve the goal include banning the sale of cigarettes on camps and bases and making NZ defence force housing smokefree. It will also evolve camps and bases into smokefree […]

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Fashion and smoking: Celebrities “rebel” at the MET Gala

Fashion and the tobacco industry have a long and intertwined history. Dated images of fashion models smoking while looking impossibly glamorous seem clichéd and old fashioned. Now, smoking is more a symbol of addiction, death, and corporate manipulation – no longer is smoking shorthand for rebellion, coolness and aspiration. But, that didn’t stop celebrities attending […]

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France: breaking new ground in tobacco control

The start of 2017 has seen tobacco control in France boosted with a series of ground-breaking tobacco control measures, as detailed in a recent article by Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. After a phase-in period, cigarette plain packaging is fully in force as of 1 January 2017. As in other countries that have already introduced plain […]

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