To the STOP Network: Thank You

In 2023, the tobacco industry tried to interfere in policies, swaying them to favor its revenues over people’s lives. It marketed to young people to try to hook them on newer tobacco and nicotine products. It continued to flood the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, tear down trees and contribute to other environmental harms like plastic pollution. And it perpetuated inequity by targeting people who already face worse health outcomes due to systemic discrimination and lobbying to delay or stop measures designed to protect those groups.

Because of these tactics, which the industry relentlessly pursues year after year, more than 8 million people die annually from tobacco use. Around 1.3 million of those people don’t even smoke—they’re the victims of secondhand smoke. And many others must live with the devastating health, financial and environmental effects of tobacco production and use.

The tobacco industry is powerful, but so is the large and growing movement against it. Behind STOP’s work in 2023 are teams of dedicated public health professionals, researchers, advocates and communication experts who worked together to fight back against the industry.

Why do we do it? To save lives, help the environment, reduce inequity and protect future generations from the industry’s predatory practices.

How do we do it? By collaborating with and connecting a growing network of academic and public health organizations. STOP would like to thank everyone who worked with us this year to counter the tobacco industry.

Because of these collaborations in 2023:

• STOP released its first film, “Tobacco Slave,” produced by the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath. The film shines a light on the industry’s historical and current business practices. Due to the structure and inequity within the industry’s supply chains, many tobacco farmers work in unsafe and unfair conditions. STOP also worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) to create an accompanying brief on how the industry perpetuates these market conditions and what governments can do to help farmers.
• STOP and the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control released the third Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index. This latest edition, which assesses 90 countries, documents numerous examples of tobacco industry interference around the world and emphasizes the urgent need for governments to implement Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
• STOP released its third report on tobacco industry advertising in F1. This report revealed that Netflix had streamed more than one billion minutes of “F1: Drive to Survive” footage that contained tobacco-related branding. This work complemented a new report from the Truth Initiative, “Tobacco’s Starring Role: How On-Screen Tobacco Imagery Drives Youth E-Cigarette Use and What the Entertainment Industry Can Do to Change the Picture.” Together, the two reports paint a picture of an industry expanding its marketing through digital media. STOP’s Director also participated on a Truth Initiative panel about the dangers of young people being exposed to tobacco and nicotine imagery in media.
• STOP collaborated with Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) to call out the tobacco industry for contributing to the world’s plastic pollution crisis with its plastic cigarette filters. To counter the industry’s narrative around sustainability, STOP produced a mythbuster that shared the facts about filters: They don’t provide any health benefits and they harm the environment.
• STOP partnered with Tobacconomics, an economic research program at the University of Illinois Chicago, to summarize how tobacco taxes can promote equity. Citing Tobacconomics’ rigorous research, STOP published a brief that explains how tobacco use worsens existing inequities and how tobacco taxes are progressive and pro-equity.
• The public health sector congratulated Concordia, an organization that convenes heads of state, business executives, nonprofit leaders and others, on ending its relationship with Philip Morris International (PMI). PMI’s CEO was scheduled to speak at the Concordia Annual Summit, but after outreach from WHO, STOP and other public health organizations, Concordia rescinded PMI’s membership and removed its CEO from the speaker lineup.

To the STOP global network and those around the world who support its work: Thank you. With this valued collaboration comes meaningful change: tobacco control progress, and lives saved.

Next year holds many of the same challenges we faced in 2023—and likely some new ones—but we are ready and eager to face them.

STOP wishes everyone in its network and beyond a happy holiday season and a productive and fruitful 2024!