Coral Gartner, Kathryn Steadman, Lisa Nissen In Australia, nicotine-containing vape products are only available on prescription, and reforms to further restrict the availability of vaping products are planned which will make the country’s vaping laws among the most restrictive in the world. In a recent Special Communication, Professor Coral Gartner and colleagues argue for an alternative regulatory model through pharmacists. They explain their reasoning in this Conversation article, which we have reposted here. The Australian government is currently considering a bill to implement th ..read more

Deborah Sy In the ongoing battle against plastic pollution to protect the marine environment, a decision at COP10 on the implementation of Article 18 (Protection of the Environment) serves as a beacon of hope. Every year, some 4.5 trillion littered plastic cigarette butts contribute to the consistent ranking for the top plastic items in debris collected (e.g., 33% in beach clean-ups and 29% in harbours). Significant by count but relatively small in volume, cigarette butts, aside from being a persistent plastic pollutant, are also highly toxic contaminants that have been proven to kill a variet ..read more

Deborah Sy and Lilia Olefir In its 10th session, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)  Conference of the Parties (COP) has for the first time, an opportunity to support the development of options for using liability to protect the environment, as suggested by the Draft Decision on WHO FCTC Article 19 initially proposed by Oman, Iran, and Pakistan under agenda item 6.5. Additionally, a supplementary provisional agenda on Article 18 implementation (Environment) proposes holding the tobacco industry accountable for environmental harms. Both proposals aim to achieve policy c ..read more

Mary Assunta The tobacco industry (TI), that peddles harmful and addictive products globally, has intensified its interference to sabotage and undermine public health policy. Many governments succumbed to its influence mainly because they failed to act cohesively when dealing with the industry and its tactics. No country has been spared from the interference and there is a worsening trend as more countries deteriorated in their efforts in 2023 compared to countries that improved. This is the main finding of the Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index 2023, the fourth in the series, which ra ..read more

Ruth Canty and Marita Hefler New Zealand has announced it will repeal the country’s world-leading smokefree laws. Faced with a choice between leading a turning point in the global tobacco epidemic or turning back the clock, New Zealand’s new incoming coalition government chose the latter. The new coalition government is made up of right-wing parties, the National party, together with minor parties ACT and NZ First. The coalition agreement between the National party and the ACT party states that the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022 will remove th ..read more

Mahir Dyan Amin, ABM Zubair, Md. Shahedul Alam, Md. Hasan Shahriar Bangladesh is globally the 9th largest cigarette market. Adolescent (13-15 year olds) smoking prevalence is 9.2% and over 35% of those aged over 15 are currently smoking. Tobacco use claims 161,000 lives a year and incapacitates hundreds of thousands of people. A 2019 study conducted by the American Cancer Society put the financial burden of tobacco use in Financial Year (FY) 2017-18 at 305.6 billion Bangladeshi Taka (BDT) much higher than the revenue generated from tobacco which was BDT 228.1 billion.  Overall, tobacco us ..read more

Srishti Nawani and Sonu Goel         India has taken a ground-breaking step in public health by becoming the first country to mandate anti-tobacco warnings and disclaimers on over-the-top (OTT) platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. OTT platforms are digital services delivering multimedia content over the internet, bypassing traditional broadcasting avenues. The ruling means that the publishers of online content which displays tobacco products or use will have to display 30 second anti-tobacco messages at the beginning and in the middle of the content. This pionee ..read more

John Maa and Jeffrey Wigand A long-awaited advance in global tobacco control to address the “Low Tar Lie” is currently playing out in the Netherlands. After a five-year legal process, the Dutch Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal heard final arguments in June 2023 in a lawsuit brought by the Dutch Youth Smoking Prevention Foundation.  This case may mandate more accurate methods to analyze the levels of tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide (TNCO) from cigarettes across the European Union (EU), and force tobacco companies to redesign cigarette filters or modify cigarette composition to reduce ..read more

Laura LlambÍ, Diego Rodriguez, Beatriz Goja, Adriana Rodriguez, Ana Lorenzo Over the past few decades, Uruguay has secured great achievements in tobacco control, followed in turn, by favourable health outcomes. After becoming the first indoor-smoke-free country in the Americas region in 2006, a comprehensive tobacco control law was passed in 2008. By this time, the Uruguayan government had already enacted the world’s largest pictorial health warning labels and implemented regulations which permitted only one variant per brand, which is still a unique regulation at present. After ..read more

Adriana Blanco Marquizo United Nations bodies already offer the tools to remove industry obstacles from the path of a liveable climate and improved public health. The global community must use them. For decades, the vehicle industry produced vehicle fuel with lead additives. The decision by carmakers and refiners to use lead helped vehicles achieve greater power and was patented by its producers. It also poisoned human beings. This was not a surprise. As early as the Roman era there were suspicions that lead damaged human health, and — more immediately — workers at the plants producing tetraet ..read more