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The tobacco industry's future depends on increasing tobacco use in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), which face a growing burden of tobacco-related disease, yet have potential to prevent full-scale escalation of this epidemic. To drive up sales the industry markets its products heavily, deliberately targeting non-smokers and keeps prices low until smoking and local economies are sufficiently established to drive prices and profits up. The industry systematically flaunts existing tobacco control legislation and works aggressively to prevent future policies using its resource advantage to present highly misleading economic arguments, rebrand political activities as corporate social responsibility, and establish and use third parties to make its arguments more palatable. Increasingly it is using domestic litigation and international arbitration to bully LMICs from implementing effective policies and hijacking the problem of tobacco smuggling for policy gain, attempting to put itself in control of an illegal trade in which there is overwhelming historical evidence of its complicity. Progress will not be realised until tobacco industry interference is actively addressed as outlined in Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Exemplar LMICs show this action can be achieved and indicate that exposing tobacco industry misconduct is an essential first step.

Summary Points * Because sugary beverages are implicated in the global obesity crisis, major soda manufacturers have recently employed elaborate, expensive, multinational corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns. * These campaigns echo the tobacco industry's use of CSR as a means to focus responsibility on consumers rather than on the corporation, bolster the companies' and their products' popularity, and to prevent regulation. * In response to health concerns about their products, soda companies appear to have launched comprehensive CSR initiatives sooner than did tobacco companies. * Unlike tobacco CSR campaigns, soda company CSR campaigns explicitly aim to increase sales, including among young people. * As they did with tobacco, public health advocates need to counter industry CSR with strong denormalization campaigns to educate the public and policymakers about the effects of soda CSR campaigns and the social ills caused by sugary beverages. Implications for Public Health Advocates Tobacco companies launched CSR campaigns to rehabilitate themselves with the public when their image had been tarnished [20]. Because the most comprehensive initiatives were introduced well after intense public outcry, however, their CSR efforts struggled to achieve their aims [42].

Confronted by compelling peer-reviewed scientific evidence of the harms of smoking, the tobacco industry, beginning in the 1950s, used sophisticated public relations approaches to undermine and distort the emerging science. The industry campaign worked to create a scientific controversy through a program that depended on the creation of industry–academic conflicts of interest. This strategy of producing scientific uncertainty undercut public health efforts and regulatory interventions designed to reduce the harms of smoking. A number of industries have subsequently followed this approach to disrupting normative science. Claims of scientific uncertainty and lack of proof also lead to the assertion of individual responsibility for industrially produced health risks.

This malign industry must not be allowed to influence clinicians’ learning

Standardised packaging (SP) of tobacco products is an innovative tobacco control measure opposed by transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) whose responses to the UK government's public consultation on SP argued that evidence was inadequate to support implementing the measure. The government's initial decision, announced 11 months after the consultation closed, was to wait for 'more evidence', but four months later a second 'independent review' was launched. In view of the centrality of evidence to debates over SP and TTCs' history of denying harms and manufacturing uncertainty about scientific evidence, we analysed their submissions to examine how they used evidence to oppose SP. We purposively selected and analysed two TTC submissions using a verification-oriented cross-documentary method to ascertain how published studies were used and interpretive analysis with a constructivist grounded theory approach to examine the conceptual significance of TTC critiques. The companies' overall argument was that the SP evidence base was seriously flawed and did not warrant the introduction of SP. However, this argument was underpinned by three complementary techniques that misrepresented the evidence base. First, published studies were repeatedly misquoted, distorting the main messages. Second, 'mimicked scientific critique' was used to undermine evidence; this form of critique insisted on methodological perfection, rejected methodological pluralism, adopted a litigation (not scientific) model, and was not rigorous. Third, TTCs engaged in 'evidential landscaping', promoting a parallel evidence base to deflect attention from SP and excluding company-held evidence relevant to SP. The study's sample was limited to sub-sections of two out of four submissions, but leaked industry documents suggest at least one other company used a similar approach. The TTCs' claim that SP will not lead to public health benefits is largely without foundation. The tools of Better Regulation, particularly stakeholder consultation, provide an opportunity for highly resourced corporations to slow, weaken, or prevent public health policies.

BackgroundChina is the largest producer and consumer of tobacco products worldwide. While direct marketing and advertisement of tobacco products is restricted, indirect marketing still exists under the guise of sponsorship and corporate social responsibility (CSR). This case study is focused on tobacco industry-sponsored elementary schools in Chinese rural areas.MethodsField visits were conducted in Yunnan province to interview students, teachers, school principals and parents to understand their perceptions of the tobacco industry and its sponsorship of schools. Interviews with tobacco control activists were conducted in Beijing to discuss national tobacco control efforts targeting tobacco industry sponsorship. Interview data were transcribed and coded, with key themes developed using thematic analysis.ResultsWhile health consequences of smoking are generally known, attitudes towards the tobacco industry and its CSR activities remain positive among the general public. Educators and parents do not perceive any impacts on schoolchildren from exposure to ‘pro-tobacco propaganda’ created by the industry’s CSR activities. Attitudes among tobacco control activists were drastically different, with consensus that CSR activities constitute indirect marketing attempts that should be banned.ConclusionNational tobacco control legislation banning all forms of indirect marketing including CSR is needed in order to protect the health of future generations.

The tobacco and nicotine industry, embedded in colonial exploitation and racialised harm, remains a leading cause of preventable disease, death, and intergenerational trauma. This article presents a transformative abolitionist public health framework, grounded in Indigenous-led principles of sovereignty, truth-telling, love, and justice. It aims to dismantle the structural drivers of harm perpetuated by the industry. We centre abolition as a moral and ethical imperative, but also as a practical necessity to uphold the human right to health, restore Indigenous authority, and eliminate systems that commodify addiction and death. Drawing on Indigenous health paradigms and abolitionist theory, we outline practical, policy-facing pathways to abolition. These include divesting from harm, reinvesting in care, defunding industry influence, and embedding reparative justice. Examples include legal liability mechanisms, profit caps, truth-telling commissions, trade reform, and Indigenous-led health infrastructure. We distinguish abolition from prohibition, framing it as a strategic, relational, and system-wide response that invests in life-affirming alternatives rather than punitive control. At the heart of this framework is love, a radical commitment to healing, collective well-being, and restoring power and agency to communities most harmed. Rather than placing responsibility on individuals, this framework offers a systems-wide approach to public health that targets the structural drivers of harm. This article contributes a new model for health-generative public policy, advancing abolition as an urgent strategy for equity, truth, and planetary and human health.

ObjectiveCorporate social responsibility activities, such as third-party awards, provide an opportunity for tobacco companies (TCs) to promote themselves as socially, economically and environmentally responsible organisations. This study aimed to determine how TCs are using third-party awards to frame themselves and their core activities via company-controlled communication channels.MethodsTC-owned media coverage promoting third-party awards was identified from company-owned media channels, including websites, reports, press releases and Twitter. Using framing theory and thematic analysis, frames and broader themes were identified using a process of inductive coding.ResultsTC-produced media content promoting third-party awards framed the companies as socially and environmentally responsible organisations, which excel at business and are innovative and transformative. Dominant frames identified included excellent workplace culture, championing diversity and inclusion and action on the environment.ConclusionTCs are capitalising on the perceived credibility and objectivity of third-party awards using these ‘honours’ as a promotional strategy to justify their continuing role in society and enhance their perceived legitimacy in relation to claims of ethical and responsible behaviour. The results of this study have implications for tobacco control advocacy, as continuing to allow the promotion of these awards appears to contravene or conflict with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Recent attempts by large tobacco companies to represent themselves as socially responsible have been widely dismissed as image management. Existing research supports such claims by pointing to the failings and misleading nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. However, few studies have focused in depth on what tobacco companies hoped to achieve through CSR or reflected on the extent to which these ambitions have been realised. Iterative searching relating to CSR strategies was undertaken of internal British American Tobacco (BAT) documents, released through litigation in the US. Relevant documents (764) were indexed and qualitatively analysed. In the past decade, BAT has actively developed a wide-ranging CSR programme. Company documents indicate that one of the key aims of this programme was to help the company secure access to policymakers and, thereby, increase the company's chances of influencing policy decisions. Taking the UK as a case study, this paper demonstrates the way in which CSR can be used to renew and maintain dialogue with policymakers, even in ostensibly unreceptive political contexts. In practice, the impact of this political use of CSR is likely to be context specific; depending on factors such as policy élites' understanding of the credibility of companies as a reliable source of information. The findings suggest that tobacco company CSR strategies can enable access to and dialogue with policymakers and provide opportunities for issue definition. CSR should therefore be seen as a form of corporate political activity. This underlines the need for broad implementation of Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Measures are needed to ensure transparency of interactions between all parts of government and the tobacco industry and for policy makers to be made more aware of what companies hope to achieve through CSR.