News

A new brief from STOP discusses how tobacco makes inequality worse. It cites research from Tobacconomics, at the University of Illinois Chicago, which “shows that tobacco taxes are an effective tool to promote equity because they reduce tobacco use, particularly among people with lower income”. It also includes evidence indicating that tobacco taxes do not lead to…

A new paper from the Tobacco Control Research Group explores how the tobacco industry responds to tax increases in 12 African countries, by adopting pricing strategies such as overshifting and undershifting while passing tax increases over to consumers. The researchers considered the individual tobacco companies, the type of producer,  including transnationals and domestic companies, and the…

Data on biomarkers (measures of processes happening in the body) are fundamental to assessing the potential health risks of heated tobacco products (HTPs). Yet, biomarker data from clinical studies on HTPs, most of which were conducted by the tobacco industry, provide limited insight into the lung cancer risks posed by HTPs, according to a new review. The review, published…

In May 2023 the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW) published its 2022 tax return. STOP and TCRG analysis found that, as in previous years, the vast majority of grant funding goes to high-income countries, despite FSFW claiming to focus on low and middle-income countries. Financial contributions to FSFW from Philip Morris International (PMI), the sole funder, have…

A new review by TCRG researchers published in Globalization and Health brings together the existing literature on the countering of tobacco industry interference. Based on 30 peer-reviewed studies covering five WHO regions, it suggests that tobacco control advocates engage in a wide range of activities when countering tobacco industry interference, which are summarised in the paper under five key…

A comment piece by Sonia Sodhar in The Observer on Sunday noted that the public health messaging on e-cigarettes is “further mired by the involvement of the tobacco industry”. This article signposts the TobaccoTactics E-cigarettes page, which in turn links to detailed information on each of the ‘big 4’ transnational companies and their interests in these products. See…

An article published in the Observer on Sunday 18 June details the activities of UK lobbyists featured on TobaccoTactics, describing their involvement in campaigns promoting the use of e-cigarettes and lobbying against the World Health Organization (WHO). The article includes quotes from TCRG deputy director Phil Chamberlain, the WHO’s  Dr. Vinayak Prasad,  and Martin McKee, president of the British…

On Thursday 8 June 2023, the Dutch Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal will hear the final appeal of a case in which Youth Smoking Prevention (Stichting Rookpreventie Jeugd, RPJ) “demands that the government take steps against the rigged cigarette and manipulation of cigarette emissions measurements.” The court session starts at 10 a.m. local time and can be followed via…

New research published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health reveals how researchers with links to the tobacco industry are failing to declare these conflicts of interest (COI) in academic publications.   The authors of the study contacted tobacco control experts for nominations of researchers suspected to have tobacco industry COIs,…

In this piece for World Environment Day 2023, Marzia Violini considers the consequences of our throwaway culture. Read the blog on the TCRG web page. Related articles on TobaccoTactics: E-cigarettes: Tobacco Company Interests in Single Use Products Plastics, the Environment and the Tobacco Industry Unsustainable: Big Tobacco’s use of the UN SDGs Tobacco and the…