Tobacco Tactics long read looks at industry use of UN SDGs

The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 objectives which seek to provide “a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future”.

In a new long read for Tobacco Tactics, researchers Tom Gatehouse and Britta K. Matthes take a detailed look at tobacco industry discourse around the SDGs, focusing on four of the goals to which the industry devotes most attention. They reveal the distance between the industry’s words and its actions, showing how it has appropriated the SDGs in order to promote its newer nicotine and tobacco products, launder its own image, and claim a position as a legitimate stakeholder in matters of global development.

Despite the tobacco industry’s apparent enthusiasm for the SDGs, the article argues that industry interests are in fact incompatible with sustainable development. Reinforcing tobacco control and coordinating global strategies to counter industry interference are therefore vital to ensure that the SDGs have the best possible chance of success.

Read the article here:

Unsustainable: Big Tobacco’s use of the UN SDGs

See also the University of Bath’s Tobacco and Public Health Blog:

Can Big Tobacco really be part of a sustainable future?