Uncovering the Truths Behind the Tobacco Industry’s
Deception
Here are some hard truths about tobacco from the World Health Organization (WHO): Tobacco use is responsible for over eight million deaths globally every year. Tobacco growing leads to ecosystem disruption and accounts for 5 percent of global deforestation, a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions. Tobacco production yields two million tons of solid waste annually, much of which consists of toxic chemicals. Cigarettes and cigarette packaging are some of the most widely littered items on the planet. An estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette filters of the five and a half trillion cigarettes produced by the tobacco industry every year end up in the environment. These filters — each containing 15,000 detachable strands of cellulose acetate — end up in aquatic and urban environments, and go on to harm marine organisms, mammals, birds and plant life.
Yet, for all the staggering statistics, many headlines and discussions about tobacco have, ironically, revolved around whether vaping and e-cigarettes are safer and whether they can actually help smokers quit their nicotine addiction. “In the past, the tobacco industry’s aim was to cast doubt on the health effects of smoking,” a Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index (GTI) contributor, Cynthia Callard, says. “Now that they can no longer deny the harms, they’re in the business of selling hope that the new products are part of the solution.”
The industry’s transformation narrative has distracted consumers and policy makers from the health hazards, environmental impacts and, more important, effective solutions to reduce the health and environmental consequences of tobacco use. The way in which the tobacco industry shifts focus and attention away from itself has influenced the way society approaches the problem. Initiatives like the Global Tobacco Index, a global civil society survey by the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), a convenor of Stop Tobacco Pollution Alliance (STPA), monitors how governments are responding to tobacco industry interference and seek to protect public health from the tobacco industry’s commercial and vested interests. “We have followed a prescription for a policy that’s based on reducing consumer demand," Callard says. “We need to shift the focus on the tobacco industry to modify their core operating principles and to curb the supply of tobacco.”
The Tobacco Industry’s Attempt to Conceal Environmental Damage with Greenwashing Efforts
Considering that the tobacco industry is contributing to the destruction of the environment and to climate change, it’s illogical to regard tobacco companies as environmental stewards and champions. However, that is the very image the tobacco industry aims to create with its greenwashing efforts such as sponsoring anti-litter campaigns and shoreline cleanup activities.
Of the approximately $100 million that the tobacco industry allocates each year for corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, only a small portion actually goes to cleanups and anti-litter campaigns. According to the “Tobacco Industry Interference With Tobacco Control” report published by the World Health Organization, the tobacco industry injects large philanthropic contributions into social programs worldwide to create a positive public image in the guise of CSR. “They [the tobacco industry] try to look like environmental heroes, but in reality they are passing the responsibility to volunteers and governments to clean up their waste,” Callard says.
The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) requires countries to protect their public health policies with respect to tobacco control from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law. Another provision of the treaty recognizes that a comprehensive ban on advertising, promotion and sponsorship would reduce the consumption of tobacco products.
“Industry interference has been identified as the biggest challenge to tobacco control.”
The treaty, according to Mary Assunta, head of global research and advocacy at GGTC, acts as a powerful tool for governments to protect their efforts from being sabotaged. “Industry interference has been identified as the biggest challenge to tobacco control,” Assunta says. “Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC enables governments to ensure there is transparency in interactions with the industry, limit interactions to only when strictly necessary and denormalize so-called charity of the tobacco industry.”
In addition, some countries have adopted the “polluter pays” principle, which makes the tobacco industry responsible for cleaning up the pollution it creates. “It’s simple — the industry must pay for its pollution, which is at least $2.1 billion every year,” Assunta says, citing figures from the “Tobacco's Toxic Plastics: A Global Outlook” report. “These figures are very conservative. In Ireland, street cleaning of cigarette butts alone costs about $50 million per year — over half of the total street cleaning cost of €85 million. A few countries in Europe, like France and the Netherlands, have started charging the tobacco industry, though the amount collected is much smaller than the actual cost of pollution and cleanup. Civil society members have also observed that tobacco companies used cleanup obligations to undermine treaty bans and restrictions on tobacco CSR.”
Cultivation and Curing
Tobacco cultivation accounts for about 5 percent of deforestation in the developing world.1
Disposal
Tobacco product use contributes two million tons of solid waste annually. Around 4.5 trillion cigarette butts end up in the environment each year, which contribute to long-term harm in marine life. The impact on human health through bioaccumulation and bioamplification in the food chain is still unknown.1
Processing and Manufacturing
The production and distribution of tobacco releases toxic chemicals and greenhouse gasses, accounting for almost 84 million tons of CO2 equivalent emissions annually.2
Consumption
Toxic secondhand smoke pollutes the environment, with indoor particulate matter concentrations being 10 times higher than diesel car exhausts, and through the accumulation of residual thirdhand smoke toxins on surfaces in homes and cars.1
The Unfiltered Truth
about Filters
The vast majority of smokers use filtered cigarettes. What was presented as an attractive, marketable design feature that was supposed to keep tobacco from entering the mouth has turned into a strategy for the tobacco industry to deceive consumers into thinking that filters make cigarettes safer. Research shows that cigarette filters result in deeper inhalation of toxins, which has been linked to increased risk of adenocarcinoma, a more aggressive type of lung cancer. Internal documents of the tobacco companies revealed that filters are defective because their plastic fibers tend to fall out, and research showed that the defect had not been corrected, but was concealed from consumers.3 “Tobacco companies will try to make attractive alternatives to plastic filters, but the reality is that they also produce filterless cigarettes,” Assunta says.
The Tobacco Industry’s Tactics Driving the Next Generation of Addicts
Most adult smokers initiate tobacco use during adolescence, which then continues into adulthood. According to a 2020 report by WHO, nearly nine out of 10 smokers start smoking before 18 years of age, and 98 percent start smoking by the age of 26. About three out of four adolescent smokers become long-term adult smokers. It is little wonder the tobacco industry, which invests more than $9 billion in advertising annually, increasingly targets youth in the hope that they develop lifelong nicotine addictions, replacing the millions of smokers who die annually because of tobacco use.
E-cigarettes are surging in popularity among youth partly because of the availability and variety of flavors. E-cigarette liquids come in thousands of flavors.4 “The tobacco industry targets youths with flavored products,” says Lisa Lu, head at International Youth Tobacco Control (IYTC), part of a global youth movement focusing on “Intergenerational Responsibility of the Tobacco Industry”5, which seeks to hold the tobacco industry accountable for harming people and the planet. “Flavors such as mango, strawberry and chocolate are the types of sweet flavors that appeal to youth,” says Lu. “The tobacco companies argue that flavored vapes help with cessation of tobacco use, but the truth is that more than 80 percent of youth who’ve used tobacco products started with flavored products.”
WHO also emphasizes the tobacco industry’s decades-long marketing tactic of creating the perception that smoking or vaping is cool by associating it with youthful activities like going to music concerts or clubbing.
“That tactic presents a picture to youth who browse social media that they should vape if they, too, want to appear fun and sociable,” Lu says. “In addition to the aggressive marketing of vape products, the tobacco industry continues to advertise cigarette products to youth, especially in developing countries like Peru, Indonesia and the Philippines, for example, by placing billboards near schools.”
Research shows that part of the problem is the tobacco industry’s misrepresentation6 of its products as safe and “socially responsible,”7 something that has distracted policy makers from the truth. Even parents are distracted.
The public could be better served through information about the tobacco industry’s deceptions and the potential risks, and the long-term effects of tobacco use in any form. Research shows that nicotine affects parts of the brain responsible for learning and memory, and in the adolescent brain, the effects can become permanent.8 Nicotine can also impair decision-making ability in the long term and worsen anxiety, irritability, impulsivity, depression and other mental health disorders. Youth who smoke are at increased risk of developing psychological problems such as major depressive disorder, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder, and of more pronounced attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
In response, WHO has launched a TikTok challenge, #TobaccoExposed, as it continues to call on all sectors to help stop tobacco and related industries from targeting children and young people. The campaign encourages schools to refuse any form of tobacco company sponsorship and prohibits representatives of e-cigarette and tobacco companies from speaking to students. It calls for celebrities and influencers to reject all offers of tobacco sponsorship and for governments to ban all forms of tobacco advertising and promotion.
According to the WHO FCTC, the most rational way to make the tobacco industry pay for the harms it has caused is to increase tobacco taxes and apply surcharges. These revenues can then be allocated to a wide range of areas where the industry has caused harm, including covering social and health expenses as well as environmental pollution. Additionally, WHO recommends increasing taxes as the single most effective means of reducing tobacco use.
1 Tobacco’s Toxic Plastics: A Global Outlook, Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), May 2022. Available at: https://tobaccoplastics.ggtc.world/
2 World No Tobacco Day campaign raises alarm on tobacco industry environmental impact, May 31, 2022. Available at: https://fctc.who.int/newsroom/news/item/31-05-2022-world-no-tobacco-day-campaign-raises-alarm-on-tobacco-industry-environmental-impact
3 Whose butt is it? Tobacco industry research about smokers and cigarette butt waste Tobacco Control 2011. Available at: https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/tobaccocontrol/20/Suppl_1/i2.full.pdf
4 Adolescents' interest in trying flavored e-cigarettes, Tobacco Control, Sep. 15, 2016. Available at: https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/25/Suppl_2/ii62.info
5 Statement of the Youth, International Youth Tobacco Control, Aug 25, 2022. Available at: https://www.iytc.org/post/statement-of-the-youth
6 Harm Reduction, Tobacco Tactics, updated Nov. 22, 2022, accessed Feb. 9, 2023.
7 CSR Strategy, Tobacco Tactics, updated Sept. 6, 2021, accessed Feb. 9, 2023.
8 Tobacco Industry: Manipulating the Youth into a Lifelong Addiction, Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control,
Aug. 10, 2022. Available at: https://ggtc.world/library/tobacco-industry-manipulating-the-youth-into-a-lifelong-addiction-1
How to Hold the Tobacco
Industry Accountable
How to Hold the Tobacco
Industry Accountable
How to Hold the Tobacco
Industry Accountable
How to Hold the Tobacco
Industry Accountable
