In recent months, Philip Morris International has been claiming it wants to lead the push to a smoke free world and wants to work with governments towards the phase out of conventional cigarettes. The claims have been met with scepticism, but do they stand up to scrutiny? At an investor day held in late September 2016, […]
Latest articles
Both Sides of the Argument? JTI-MacDonald’s Anti-Plain Packaging Spin in Canada
Julia Smith Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University JTI-MacDonald recently launched a multimedia campaign, Both Sides of the Argument, to sway public opinion against proposed plain packaging legislation in Canada. The campaign includes advertisements on popular radio stations, a website, posters in restaurant and bar bathrooms, advertisements in national newspapers and sponsored posts […]
Big Tobacco’s dirty tricks in opposing plain packaging
Jenny Hatchard, University of Bath Tobacco companies want to sell you cigarettes – today, tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. Whether you’re at the tobacco counter or out with friends, glitzy cigarette packaging is a really important part of their sales pitch. Tobacco companies are aware of this. It’s why they are so opposed to […]
Attacking the source of a 6 million deaths per year epidemic: tobacco industry divestment
Dr. Bronwyn King CEO, Tobacco Free Portfolios I never would have imagined my work as a doctor would take me to corporate boardrooms across the globe, from Melbourne to London, Paris, New York and more. But then I never would have imagined I would be invested in the tobacco industry either. In my early time […]
Southeast Asia: Indonesia lags in curbing tobacco industry interference in policy making
Indonesia has once again emerged as a clear laggard in curbing tobacco industry interference in policy-making, according to a report ranking countries in the Southeast Asia region based on their level of implementation of Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). It is the third annual report on tobacco industry interference […]
The world of predatory publishing: what is it, and what might it mean for tobacco control?
Raymond Boyle ClearWay Minnesota If your email inbox is anything like mine, you receive a near constant stream of requests to send a manuscript to the next new journal. Most researchers are familiar with this type of academic spam: the journal name might sound familiar, but these requests usually appear as a generic template. […]
Finally, some truth in advertising from the tobacco industry
Stan Shatenstein Editor & Publisher, STAN Bulletin JTI-Macdonald is one of Canada’s big three tobacco firms. On Saturday 17 September, it ran an ad in several of Canada’s leading newspapers to argue against tobacco plain packaging legislation, which the Canadian government is currently considering. The ad is shown here: […]
New Zealand: no more ‘silent salesman’ – cigarette plain packaging passed
On 8 September, New Zealand joined a growing international move to outlaw the tobacco industry’s ‘silent salesman’ when it became the latest country to introduce cigarette plain packaging. The legislation – the Smoke-Free Environments (Tobacco Standardised Packaging) Amendment Bill was passed on its third and final reading in the New Zealand parliament with 108 votes […]
Uruguay: five key messages from Philip Morris’ failed challenge to packaging laws
Hot on the heels of the tobacco industry’s failed legal challenge to the UK’s tobacco plain packaging laws in May 2016, Philip Morris suffered a new defeat in July, this time in its long-running case against Uruguay’s health warning labels. The McCabe Centre for Law and Cancer has prepared a paper outlining key aspects of the judgement which are […]
Australia: progress on Tasmania’s tobacco free generation legislation
Kathryn Barnsley, University of Tasmania In 2012 and 2014 we reported that the Australian state of Tasmania was developing mechanisms for implementing the tobacco free generation (TFG). Tasmania has been paradoxically both a leader in legislative reform and a laggard in allocating resources to tobacco control. The Public Health Amendment (Tobaccofree Generation) Bill 2014 was […]