Unless urgent action is taken, tobacco will kill as many as 1 billion people this century, making it the greatest single source of preventable death and disease. Yet the tobacco industry aggressively markets to children, promotes pseudoscience, and lobbies against effective policies to reduce smoking and protect health.
Tobacco use is linked to cancer, heart and lung disease, and diabetes. In addition to the high costs of treating diseases caused by its use, tobacco often kills people at the peak of their wage-earning capacity. This deprives families of their breadwinners, robs nations of a healthy and productive workforce, and deepens poverty in many countries.
Vital Strategies is a partner in the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use. We work with governments and civil society organizations to implement proven policies like those in the World Health Organization’s international health treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and in the MPOWER package of tobacco reduction measures. Our work has spanned over 50 low- and middle-income countries, where 80% of tobacco deaths occur.
Areas of Focus
We advocate for best-practice laws and policies to reduce tobacco use and provide grants and guidance to enable implementation and enforcement of such measures once adopted. Our mass media campaigns encourage quitting, delaying initiation and supporting policy goals. Over the long term, this helps to change behaviors related to the acceptability of smoking and attitudes about the tobacco industry. Vital Strategies also collaborates in efforts to expose the tobacco industry’s ploys to evade tobacco control policies and its insidious marketing tactics.
With our partners, we create locally tailored, message-tested campaigns about tobacco harms that run long term in broadcast outlets and social media platforms, propelling the agenda.
We work with policymakers and civil society toward smoke-free laws for public spaces and to make homes smoke-free to eliminate the danger of secondhand smoke and reduce smoking overall.
We advocate for increasing taxes on tobacco, a high-impact, cost-effective measure proven to be the best way to reduce tobacco consumption.
We advise governments in designing hard-hitting graphic pack warnings to influence public attitudes toward tobacco use and urge them to prohibit misleading labels like “light,” “mild” and “low tar.”
We hold the tobacco industry accountable for its harms and support efforts around the world to address industry interference in governments’ actions to deter tobacco consumption.
We uncover and counter seductive, often invisible marketing practices the industry employs to recruit new customers to replace those who die—since tobacco kills up to half of its users.
3.29 billion people in 32 countries protected by graphic health warnings on tobacco packaging
3.69 billion people in 37 countries benefit from smoke-free laws
4.13 billion people in 28 countries covered by tobacco advertising bans
Our work reaches two-thirds of the world’s smokers
As people have shifted to using digital media, marketers of unhealthy products like tobacco have followed. This new report from Vital Strategies’ Tobacco Enforcement and Reporting Movement (TERM) uncovers the latest tobacco marketing tactics online, from advergaming to influencer promotions. It also looks at what technological innovations like the metaverse may bring and offers recommendations to get ahead of these developments.
As people have shifted to using digital media, marketers of unhealthy products like tobacco have followed. This new report from Vital Strategies’ Tobacco Enforcement and Reporting Movement (TERM) uncovers the latest tobacco marketing tactics online, from advergaming to influencer promotions. It also looks at what technological innovations like the metaverse may bring and offers recommendations to get ahead of these developments.
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