Neil Sircar and Stella Aguinaga Bialous The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought about significant disruption and trauma, and with it a rise in threats to human rights. UN Secretary-General Guterres remarked on April 23rd, 2020 that the pandemic was “fast becoming a human rights crisis” as nations grapple with detecting, preventing, and responding to overlapping […]
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An urgent call to address tobacco-related health disparities among sexual and gender minority populations in the COVID-19 pandemic
Andy S.L. Tan, Priscilla K. Gazarian, Elaine Hanby, Sabreen Darwish, Bethany C. Farnham, Jennifer Potter, Suha Ballout Tobacco-related health disparities are defined as “differences in the patterns, prevention, and treatment of tobacco use; the risk, incidence, morbidity, mortality, and burden of tobacco-related illness that exist among specific population groups in the United States; and related […]
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 […]
Smoking history is an important risk factor for severe COVID-19
Giuseppe Gorini, Luke Clancy, Esteve Fernandez and Silvano Gallus Current evidence suggests that an association exists between smoking and COVID-19 severity, in line with recent research which has shown that smoking is associated with increased risk of acute respiratory distress syndrome. Moreover, a study based on 1099 COVID-19 patients showed that 31.7% of patients […]
Smokeless tobacco use and the COVID-19 pandemic
The use of tobacco products is of particular concern during the COVID-19 pandemic. Head and neck surgeons Dr Arjun Singh and Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi argue that smokeless tobacco use requires attention to help stop the spread of the disease. Since late 2019, the world has witnessed the spread of a pandemic affecting the respiratory […]
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 […]
Covid-19 and smoking: the elephant in the room?
Kathryn Barnsley, Sukhwinder Singh Sohal For more on COVID-19 and smoking, see the Tobacco Control resources page Click here The role of smoking in the contraction, transmission and mortality rate of Covid-19 should be given research attention, and countries should allocate resources to health stimulus packages, scientific research, and actions to further reduce smoking rates. […]
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: tobacco industry hydra’s many political investment heads
Isra Ahmad The tobacco industry has a history of financial investments (including lobbying) in political activity, impacting voter-based decision making on a global scale. A 2015 study from Oklahoma, USA found that legislators with the largest amounts of campaign contributions and gifts from tobacco lobbyists performed actions that were critical to advance tobacco industry objectives. […]