Exposing and addressing tobacco industry conduct in low-income and middle-income countries

Anna B. Gilmore, Gary Fooks, Jeffrey Drope, Stella Aguinaga Bialous, Rachel Rose Jackson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1029-1043
Number of pages15
JournalThe Lancet
Volume385
Issue number9972
Early online date13 Mar 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Mar 2015

Bibliographical note

© 2015, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

The article may be available to view free of charge provided you register, for free, with the Lancet.

Funding: National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (O1CA160695); National Institute on Drug Abuse, the
Fogarty International Center and the National Cancer Institute of the
National Institutes of Health (R01DA035158); Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use. Funding to UKCTAS: British Heart Foundation, Cancer
Research UK, ESRC, MRC and the National Institute of Health Research.

Keywords

  • codes of ethics
  • crime
  • developing countries
  • female
  • organized financing
  • humans
  • income
  • male
  • marketing
  • smoking
  • tobacco industry

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