While the world was focused last week on the Glasgow Climate Conference (COP26), officials from 160 countries and the European Union gathered virtually to address another urgent global crisis – the crisis in tobacco consumption that is one of the largest causes of death worldwide, year after year. Otherwise known as COP9, the ninth Conference […] Continue reading ->
The number of tobacco users globally has dropped from 1.32 billion in 2015 to 1.3 billion, and is expected to decline to 1.27 billion smokers by 2025, according to the fourth World Health Organization (WHO) global tobacco trends report. The report, released on Tuesday, revealed that 60 countries are now on track to achieving the […] Continue reading ->
While it pales in comparison to tobacco industry marketing, two new capital investment funds worth some $75 million to support low- and middle-income countries in their fight against tobacco are being created by signatories to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and a related Protocol on illegal sales. Together, the funds would yield an estimated […] Continue reading ->
The tobacco industry used the COVID-19 pandemic to ingratiate itself with governments around the world and win concessions for their harmful products, according to a review of 80 countries analyzed in the Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index 2021, which was released on Tuesday. It wasn’t simply economically vulnerable countries that were susceptible to industry influence. […] Continue reading ->
Long months of pandemic lockdown have only exacerbated the harms due to alcohol experienced by billions of people worldwide. Now, WHO is in the process of developing a new alcohol action plan, in an effort to re-energize a stagnant process and overcome a “lost decade” of little progress on alcohol policies. Can it make a […] Continue reading ->
Imagine you run a country and someone comes to you and says, “I have an idea for how you can make people healthier, reduce cancer by 20%, protect women and children, and even put money in your coffers for COVID-19 response, vaccines and recovery efforts.” It sounds implausible, even absurd. And yet, there is one […] Continue reading ->
While there has been significant global progress in curbing conventional tobacco products, newer tobacco and nicotine products such as e-cigarettes are evading regulation, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) 2021 report on the tobacco epidemic. Some 5.3 billion people are now covered by at least one of the six tobacco ‘MPower’ control measures recommended […] Continue reading ->
In Portugal, where all illicit drugs are decriminalized, drug disorders claim the lives of just 0.8 in 100,000 people, a figure that pales in comparison to Brazil, the Philippines – or even the US where the death toll stands at a staggering 18.75 in 100,000 people, or 23 times higher than Portugal. High death […] Continue reading ->
Over the past several decades, the tobacco industry has tried to influence policy by partnering with various United Nations (UN) agencies. Many of these agencies, however, have since cut ties with the industry, thus safeguarding their initiatives and policies from Big Tobacco’s commercial interests. One notable exception remains and must be addressed: the continued membership […] Continue reading ->
NAIROBI – The Kenyan government issued a directive in mid-February this year requiring the tobacco industry to register all nicotine products as tobacco products – but the industry has yet to comply. This follows the decision by the Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Mutahi Kagwe, to declare “nicotine pouches” illegal, thus overturning a […] Continue reading ->