Heated tobacco products: another tobacco industry global strategy to slow progress in tobacco control.

There has been a global decline in tobacco consumption that, if continued, will negatively impact the tobacco industry's profits. This decline led the industry to invent and market new products, including heated tobacco products (HTP). HTP are an extension of the industry's strategies to undermine government's tobacco regulatory efforts as they are being promoted as part of the solution for the tobacco epidemic. Under the moniker of 'harm reduction', the tobacco companies are attempting to rehabilitate their reputation so they can more effectively influence governments to roll back existing tobacco control policies or create exemptions for their HTP. Rolling back tobacco control policies will make it easier for the companies to renormalise tobacco use to increase social acceptability for all their products. When regulations are absent or when loopholes exist in classifying HTP as a tobacco product (thus subject to all tobacco control regulations), the industry's marketing of HTP is making these products more visible to the public and more accessible. Governments need to ensure that HTP are regulated as tobacco products or drugs and reject partnerships with the tobacco companies to promote 'harm reduction'. The tobacco companies remain the vector of the tobacco-caused epidemic and cannot be part of the global tobacco control solution

Local smoke-free policy development in Santa Fe, Argentina

ObjectiveTo describe the process of approval and implementation of a comprehensive smoke-free law in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, between 2005 and 2009.MethodsReview of the Santa Fe smoke-free legislation, articles published in local newspapers and documentation on two lawsuits filed against the law, and interviews with key individuals in Santa Fe.ResultsEfforts to implement smoke-free policies in Santa Fe began during the 1990s without success, and resumed in 2005 when the provincial Legislature approved the first 100% smoke-free subnational law in Argentina. There was no strong opposition during the discussions within the legislature. As in other parts of the world, pro-tobacco industry interests attempted to block the implementation of the law using well known strategies. These efforts included a controversy media campaign set up, the creation of a hospitality industry association and a virtual smokers' rights group, the introduction of a counterproposal seeking modification of the law, the challenge of the law in the Supreme Court, and the proposal of a weak national bill that would 'conflict' with the subnational law. Tobacco control advocates sought media attention as a strategy to protect the law.ConclusionsSanta Fe is the first subnational jurisdiction in Latin America to have enacted a comprehensive smoke-free policy following the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. After 3 years of implementation, pro-tobacco industry forces failed to undermine the law. Other subnational jurisdictions in Argentina, as well as in Mexico and Brazil are following the Santa Fe example

A public health framework for legalized retail marijuana based on the US experience:Avoiding a new tobacco industry

Rachel Barry and Stanton Glantz argue that a public health framework that prioritizes public health over business interests should be used by US states and countries that legalize retail marijuana

Term limits and the tobacco industry.

In the 1990s several American states passed term limits on legislators with the stated intention of reducing the influence of wealthy industries on career legislators. Although term limits in the United States do not have a direct relationship to public health, the tobacco industry anticipated that term limits could have indirect effects by either limiting or expanding industry influence. We detail the strategy of the tobacco industry in the wake of term limits using internal tobacco company documents and a database of campaign contributions made to legislators in term limited states between 1988 and 2002. Despite some expectations that term limits would limit tobacco industry access to state legislators, term limits appear to have had the opposite effect