Articles

Professor Riccardo Polosa is a tobacco harm reduction advocate and has been described as one of the “most prolific” academic authors in the area of e-cigarettes.1 He has lobbied governments in favour of less restrictive regulation for potentially reduced risk products and has a history of collaborating with tobacco companies. Background Polosa is the Director of the…

Robert (‘Bob’) G. Eccles is a Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School in the United States (US) and a Visiting Professor of Management Practice at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford in the United Kingdom (UK).56 Eccles’ expertise is in ‘integrated reporting’, which combines a company’s financial, social and environmental information in a standalone document. He is…

This timeline provides a chronological overview of some of the main ways tobacco companies have tried to influence the development of Kenya’s Tobacco Control Regulations 2014. Click here for an infographic of tobacco industry interference in Kenya up to July 2015. Timeline of Tobacco Industry Interference Concerning Kenya’s Tobacco Control Regulations 2014 Date Event 3 November 2011…

Kenya is a country of considerable strategic importance for tobacco manufacturing operations in Africa, due both to its influence in the region and its strong and longstanding political links with the tobacco industry.111112113 Smoking in Kenya Kenya has high smoking prevalence.114 In 2014,  figures from the Kenyan Ministry of Health showed that 11.6% of the adult…

Kenya’s efforts to introduce tobacco control legislation that regulates the marketing and sale of tobacco products has been resisted by British American Tobacco (BAT) and other tobacco companies, which see Kenya and other African countries as a frontier area for profit growth.202 Consequently legislation in the country has repeatedly been thwarted by the tobacco industry.203204 Tobacco…

Background In 2012, the Kenyan Revenue Authority (KRA) held a tender, looking for a company to develop and implement an Excisable Goods Management System, for the fixing of revenue stamps to tobacco, wines, and spirits.231 As the first tobacco track and trace system (i.e. determining where a product was produced and following it through to the point of…

Date FDA intervention and JUUL Labs response 24 April 2018 Based on the growing concern regarding the popularity of JUUL products amongst youth, the FDA sent an official request to JUUL Labs to disclose information (deadline 19 June 2019) about its “marketing practices and research on marketing effects of product design, public health impact, and adverse experiences related to JUUL…

JUUL Labs Inc. is a San Francisco-based e-cigarette company whose product JUUL has been the focus of considerable media attention and critical commentary, mainly around its popularity among young consumers.261262263 Until 2023 tobacco company Altria owned a minority stake in JUUL Labs.264 After several years of controversy, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned…

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations (UN) agency, focused on issues related to labour such as international labour standards, child labour, social protection and unemployment.418 Background The ILO states that it aims to “bring together governments, employers and workers to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programs”.419420 As of April 2021, ILO parties…

As the harms from conventional products have become better understood, and tobacco control measures have been put in place, the cigarette market – from which tobacco companies make most of their profits – has started to shrink. To secure the industry’s longer-term future, transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) have invested in, developed and marketed various newer nicotine and tobacco products, including…