Industry Interference

Philip Morris International (PMI), British American Tobacco (BAT) and Japan Tobacco (JT) use their political influence to weaken, delay and defeat tobacco control legislation around the world.

Read stories of interference here.

Tobacco industry interference poses perhaps the single greatest threat to implementation of the global tobacco treaty.

Click here to learn more about how the treaty counters Big Tobacco’s influence.

The global tobacco treaty and World Health Assembly Resolution 54.18 provide governments with the support of the international community to stand up to interference from Big Tobacco.

Tobacco products harm public health and the global economy, imposing enormous costs on governments, consumers and private employers. Expanded trade in tobacco products stimulates consumption, increases addiction rates and harms public health. Tobacco corporations have used trade law as a tool to thwart tobacco control policies at the expense of public health.

Even the World Bank, which favors market liberalization, has concluded that comprehensive tobacco control policies are good for the global economy.

Though transnational tobacco corporations use their public relations machines to claim that tobacco-related agriculture creates jobs and boosts economic development, the facts indicate otherwise. Tobacco giants exert broad control over the tobacco production system, and have created a supply system that exploits farmers while assuring continued growth in corporate profits.
 
Click here to read the World Bank report Curbing the Epidemic: Governments and the Economics of Tobacco Control

Click here to read Corporate Accountability International's statement on tobacco growing and the economy.