Advocacy for reducing the role of the global tobacco industry on health education

The World Health Organization has projected that a billion people worldwide will die this century due to tobacco use. Only through concerted, well-coordinated efforts have countries been able to reverse the proportion of their citizens who smoke. The key strategies employed to reduce smoking rates include the passage of clean indoor and outdoor air laws, increases in the price of tobacco products, restrictions on the marketing of tobacco products (time, place, manner), supporting mass-media education to prevent initiation and increase cessation and supporting evidence-based cessation services. The number of tobacco-related deaths are generally falling in industrialized western nations and Japan while continuing to rise in low and middle income countries. Emerging tobacco markets are increasingly concentrated in countries with historically lower rates (eg African nations) and in locales with low use among women (eg Asia).

The tobacco industry has a rich history of obstructing tobacco control measures by influencing policy makers.

This component of the session will present the methods used by the industry, how they have been counteracted by public health advocates and set forth a handful of mini-case studies which demonstrate the best means to successfully overcome these strategies. The known breadth of the industry's global marketing approach and its infrastructure for influencing policy will be presented highlighting commonalities and differences between previous and current approaches. The paucity of publicly or privately support counter-marketing efforts will be discussed along with the associated projected trajectory of global tobacco use absent successful policy initiatives to undercut tobacco market share.