News

The Framework Convention Alliance cites the TobaccoTactics Covid19 database as evidence of industry interference worsening during the pandemic. The FCA’s COP9 briefing from 11 November highlights the Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index finding that “at least 11 countries that had received pandemic-related donations provided tax breaks for the industry or did not increase tobacco taxes.” It also notes…

Vital Strategies have launched a new report titled, Selling Death on Social Media: How Bidis Are Reaching Consumers Online, revealing that India’s bidi industry is exploiting rapid growth in the use of social media, particularly Facebook, to market and facilitate sales of bidi products to consumers. Key findings include: Bidi marketing takes place almost exclusively on Facebook (98%), with linkages to…

The Canadian Cancer Society publishes the 7th edition of its report  Cigarette Package Health Warnings: International Status Report,  which summarises global progress on plain packaging as well as health warnings on cigarette packets. Read the report here in English and French…

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, working with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), reports that there is uncertainty and confusion in multiple European countries as to the level of menthol flavouring present in new cigarette brands launched around the time of the EU menthol ban. Despite having argued that their new products had no ‘characterising flavour’,…

Corné van Walbeek, Professor at the School of Economics and Principal Investigator of the Economics of Tobacco Control Project and Zunda Chisha, Research officer at the Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products, unpack tobacco control in some African countries in a new piece, published in The Conversation. The authors highlight positive efforts in implementing tobacco control policies in…

Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco have been using motorsport events, like Formula One (F1) and Motorcycle races to indirectly market their products and reach younger audiences. A new report commissioned by the global tobacco industry watchdog STOP reveals the extent of these sponsorship deals. In 2021 alone, tobacco companies have spent more than…

The tobacco industry has been using tactics like influencing science, using seemingly independent third parties, and pushing arguments against taxation for decades. Now, new research by the Tobacco Control Research Group exposes more tactics used by the industry to keep people addicted and maintain high profits. A new systematic review published in the Tobacco Control journal…

Every step of a tobacco product’s life cycle degrades our planet and decimates our natural resources. Yet, tobacco companies use Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities to distract from the harms they cause to the environment. With its new campaign #BurnedByTobacco, STOP is driving attention towards the environmental destruction caused by tobacco growing, consumption and disposal; and exposing…

STOP (Stopping Tobacco Organizations and Products) has been producing a regular COVID-19 Monitoring Brief detailing the trends and patterns of tobacco industry behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic. You can now access all of this monitoring data via the new Tobacco industry COVID-19 monitoring database on our COVID-19 page! Browse the database by tactic, country and organisation, and learn…

Tobacco companies have increased their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic to make them appear part of the solution and increase profits, despite tobacco products causing more severe cases of COVID-19. We have produced an explainer video to detail how Tobacco Companies have been using the pandemic to increase their power and profits.