How can the tobacco industry be held accountable?
Demand accountability from the tobacco industry for ongoing harms to human and planetary health. Explore resources to strengthen efforts in holding the industry liable and accountable.
Why must the tobacco industry be held accountable?
The tobacco industry causes serious harm worldwide, leading to health problems, environmental damage, and misleading marketing—especially targeting young people. Cigarettes kill 8 million people every year, making smoking the leading cause of preventable deaths. Despite admitting that their products are dangerous, major tobacco companies continue using deceptive tactics to sell new products by claiming they are safer. For decades, they have misled the public while profiting from addiction. Holding them accountable is essential to protect public health, the environment, and future generations.
Environmental Damage
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Tobacco production is a major ecosystem disruptor, driving deforestation—especially in low- and middle-income countries—while offering no replenishment to the soil or surrounding farm ecosystems.
Pesticides used in tobacco farming leach into drinking water, contaminating sources and harming aquatic life. Further, Cigarette butts, the most widely littered product globally, release toxins throughout their decade-long decomposition, damaging marine ecosystems. Each year, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are discarded, making up around 15% of total debris collected worldwide. By perpetuating these long-lasting harms, the tobacco industry actively undermines global efforts toward ecosystem restoration.
Youth Addiction
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Tobacco companies hook the vulnerable youth into starting a lifelong addiction through flavors and targeted marketing.
The tobacco industry publicizes its so- called contributions to society to mask long-term health and socio-economic harms while keeping children in tobacco farms and lobbying against policies that protect children. Stronger restrictions on advertising and corporate social responsibility initiatives are essential to safeguarding future generations.
Health Harms
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The tobacco industry continues to harm public health through cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and heated tobacco products, using tactics like greenwashing and youth marketing.
Its products kill up to half of their users, causing 8 million deaths annually and costing the world $1.4 trillion in healthcare and productivity losses. With over 50 known carcinogens in cigarettes, tobacco use leads to serious diseases like lung cancer and COPD, placing a heavy burden on healthcare systems, especially in low-income countries. To counter these harms, strategies such as lawsuits, high taxes, and industry-funded victim compensation programs are essential to holding the industry accountable and supporting those affected.
Human Rights Violation
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The tobacco industry blatantly violates human rights, as its products are inherently harmful and incompatible with the right to health.
Experts argue that tobacco production and marketing should be stopped due to its severe impact on public health. Additionally, the industry's supply chain is riddled with labor exploitation, including child labor. Like the arms industry, tobacco has been recognized as fundamentally at odds with human rights principles, including those outlined in the UN Human Rights Charter.
How can governments hold the tobacco industry liable and accountable?
Taking into account the trends in tobacco industry interference, the approaches to liability in the business and human rights and environment sector, and the relevant provisions, decisions, and reports adopted by the COP under Article 19 as well as provisions of Article 5.3, the Tenth Session of the Conference of Parties (COP10) to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) , introduced several concepts…
This includes administrative procedures, effective and dissuasive sanctions, liability regimes including facilitating compensation (e.g., compensation mechanisms), including in the context of business and human rights as well as environmental harms, and the quantification of costs.
Particularly, the Decision urged Parties to implement high standards of accountability and transparency for the tobacco industry, strengthen liability regimes through legislative reforms, enforce effective sanctions, ensure policy coherence, exchange enforcement information, and monitor industry transactions to prevent interference with public health policy. It established an expert group to support Parties in developing or strengthening their liability regimes and means to counter the attempts to evade the same. It also mandated the expert group to explore the development of a method to quantify the healthcare costs that could be used as evidence in litigation; and requested the Convention Secretariat to continue to raise awareness about Article 19 of the WHO FCTC and the tools available for Parties to strengthen its implementation.
How can Article 19 be implemented to hold the industry liable?
A. Towards Health with Justice: making the tobacco industry accountable through administrative liability
Based on the fact that judicial efforts to hold the industry liable have largely failed due to systemic challenges, the paper explores administrative liability mechanisms for holding the transnational tobacco industry accountable such as compensation, adjudicatory bodies, and non-criminal sanctions…
The principles of “polluter pays” and victims’ right to compensation are emphasized, with measures including taxation, penalties, financial guarantees, and insurance. The need for international cooperation and standards is highlighted to effectively address tobacco’s environmental and health impacts and deter future misconduct
B. Advancing Environmental Protection at COP10: Implications for Tobacco’s Toxic Plastics and Extended Producer Responsibility
This article explains how the COP10 decision on the Protection of the Environment (Art 18) emphasizes using liability to protect the environment from tobacco harms, urging Parties to support tobacco control through international environmental laws.
And that the COP10 Decision, that established an expert group with a mandate to help strengthen Parties’ liability regimes, including administrative measures, can potentially help deter tobacco industry misconduct and improve access to justice.
C. STOP Accountability and Liability Series
How can people living with NCDs…
make tobacco companies pay? TI’s aggressive, deceptive marketing targets vulnerable youth, leading to long-term addiction and various noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).
Governments can leverage existing laws, such as tort and consumer protection laws, alongside global commitments like the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, to hold these companies accountable. Strategies include filing lawsuits, imposing surcharges, and implementing high taxes dedicated to health care and victim compensation. Creating national funds for victims, funded by tobacco industry penalties, is another effective approach to ensure compensation and support for those affected
b. Tobacco Industry Accountability and Liability in the time of Covid: This webinar and paper outlines areas where the tobacco industry should be made legally accountable as well as practices that make the tobacco industry pay…
The TI should account for incurring $1.4 trillion in healthcare costs and productivity losses annually due to tobacco-related diseases. Youth are affected by nicotine exposure, leading to cognitive impairments and mental health issues. Tobacco use exacerbates poverty by causing chronic diseases and diverting household funds from essentials. TI contributes to food insecurity as tobacco farming depletes arable land and soil nutrients.
Environmental damage results from deforestation and pollution from cigarette butts. TI is complicit in illicit trade, with major companies involved in smuggling. Human rights violations, including child labor, are prevalent in tobacco supply chains. The TI engages in disinformation and fraud to undermine public health policies. They lobby, interfere, and corrupt policymakers to create a favorable business environment.
Lastly, the TI imposes legal challenges to delay tobacco control legislation, incurring significant costs and hindering public health measures.. The TI should be made to provide information such as revenue, scientific studies and funding, activities in foreign countries, public relations strategies, registration of tobacco industry entities, information on manufacturers, information on production, CSR activities, expenses on lobbying, philanthropic and political contributions, or any information required to support tobacco control measures. This information would support filing cases against TI and help to hold it liable in accordance with Article 19.
D. The Liability Roadmap
The Liability Roadmap, maintained by Corporate Accountability along with environment partners, provides a guide for holding polluting industries accountable and outlines various principles and case studies for legal, legislative, policy, and cultural actions at local, national, and international levels…
It encourages participation in campaigns to make the industry pay such as the Make Big Tobacco Pay campaign.
E. WHO FCTC Article 19: Using The Judicial System To Fight Tobacco
In this paper and webinar, experts from Action on Smoking and Health…
(ASH), Corporate Accountability, and the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC ) talk about the use of the judicial systems to combat tobacco-related harm with case studies and challenges. It emphasizes the importance of using legal avenues to support public health objectives. This includes utilizing administrative liability to pursue justice for victims, and identifying compensation mechanisms that work.
F. Tobacco Trials: The "Eye on the Trials"
Tobacco Trials: The "Eye on the Trials" provides information on the timeline, procedures, evidence, witnesses and observations regarding ongoing tobacco litigation in Canada…
Its blog provides updates and insights on tobacco litigation, including the settlement with tobacco companies.
G. The Civil liability toolkit
The Civil liability toolkit, adopted by Parties at the Seventh session of the Conference of Parties (COP7) to the WHO FCTC, addresses the problem of enforcing liability against the tobacco industry by improving the ability for smoking-related disease victims to seek justice, whether as individuals or groups…
This involves actions such as reclaiming healthcare expenses, ensuring adherence to tobacco control laws through legal measures like injunctions.
The toolkit:
1. integrates case studies and model legislation/rules to enable victims to establish a direct cause for legal action, establish unambiguous liability criteria, permit courts to utilize statistical evidence, shift the burden of proof, and enable joint and several liabilities among defendants.
2. involves procedural measures such as shifting the burden of proof, permitting the use of statistical evidence to establish causation, extending time limits for legal action, and promoting the joining of multiple claimants.
3. includes tools such as case studies featuring a variety of laws that allow filling of public litigation cases to advance tobacco control
How can I learn more about holding the tobacco industry accountable and liable?
INFORMATION PACKET / TOOLS
📝 Preventing Tobacco Industry Interference: A Toolkit for Advocates and Policymakers (2023)
🗄️ World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) (2003)
📝 Physicians for Smoke-Free Canada’s timeline of tobacco litigation in Canada (2014)
📝 Public Health Law Center’s explainer on the MSA (1998)
RESEARCH / JOURNALS
📝 Tobacco Industry Accountability and Liability as a COVID-19 Response (GGTC, STOP) (2020)
🗄️ An Inherent Contradiction: The Tobacco Industry’s Environment, Social & Governance Activities (2022)
✏️ How can people living with NCDs make tobacco companies pay? (2021)
🗄️ Tobacco’s Toxic Plastics: A Global Outlook (2022)
✏️ Tobacco Industry: Manipulating the Youth into a Lifelong Addiction (2024)
🗄️ The Tobacco Industry: A Hindrance to the Elimination of Child Labor (2021)
🗄️ The Tobacco Industry and the Environment, (2021)
MEDIA
✏️ WHO FCTC Article 19: Using the Judicial System to Fight Tobacco (Webinar) (2020)
✏️ Uncovering the Truths Behind the Tobacco Industry’s Deception (PaidPost) (2024)
How did Article 19 gain momentum during COP of the WHO FCTC?
Global efforts to hold the tobacco industry accountable are growing. The WHO FCTC COP has strengthened work on Article 19 (Liability) by creating expert groups, legal toolkits, and databases to help countries take action. Recent meetings have focused on how the industry interferes in policymaking, especially by buying pharmaceutical companies to appear as both the problem and the solution. Countries are also working to calculate healthcare costs for lawsuits and improve cooperation on legal actions.
Globally, accountability is gaining traction. The UN Plastics Treaty uses the polluter pays principle to hold companies responsible for plastic pollution, including cigarette filters. Similarly, the Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights pushes for corporate accountability. These trends align with tobacco control, as tobacco-related deaths and harms violate human rights. Strengthening liability across health, environmental, and human rights sectors is a key opportunity to hold the industry responsible.
Read: The WHO FCTC Text on Article 19: Liability
WHO FCTC Text
- For the purpose of tobacco control, the Parties shall consider taking legislative action or promoting their existing laws, where necessary, to deal with criminal and civil liability, including compensation where appropriate.
- Parties shall cooperate with each other in exchanging information through the Conference of the Parties in accordance with Article 21 including: (a) information on the health effects of the consumption of tobacco products and exposure to tobacco smoke in accordance with Article 20.3(a); and (b) information on legislation and regulations in force as well as pertinent jurisprudence.
- The Parties shall, as appropriate and mutually agreed, within the limits of national legislation, policies, legal practices and applicable existing treaty arrangements, afford one another assistance in legal proceedings relating to civil and criminal liability consistent with this Convention.
- The Convention shall in no way affect or limit any rights of access of the Parties to each other’s courts where such rights exist.
- The Conference of the Parties may consider, if possible, at an early stage, taking account of the work being done in relevant international fora, issues related to liability including appropriate international approaches to these issues and appropriate means to support, upon request, the Parties in their legislative and other activities in accordance with this Article.
Read: COP10 Implementation of Article 19 of the WHO FCTC: Liability…a
COP10: Implementation of Article 19 of the WHO FCTC: Liability
In February 2024, the Tenth session of the Conference of Parties (COP10) to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) adopted a decision to implement WHO FCTC Article 19 (Liability).
Among others, it urges Parties
(a) to apply to the tobacco industry the highest standards and best practices of holding businesses liable for their conduct;
(b) to require that the tobacco industry and those working to further its interests operate and act in a manner that is accountable and transparent;
(c) to consider legislative development or reform to strengthen liability regimes, including to facilitate compensation where appropriate;
(d) to establish and apply....criminal, civil or administrative procedures and effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions…
(e) to exchange information on means of enforcement of liability of the tobacco industry, including sanctions and penalties, or compensation where appropriate;
(f) to ensure policy coherence at the national and global levels, including in international and regional organizations….
(g) to call upon international and regional organizations… to ensure that the work undertaken in these international fora, including in relation to the environment and regulation of business conduct, supports tobacco control and does not undermine it;
(h) to closely monitor transactions, such as acquisitions of or investments by transnational tobacco corporations in pharmaceutical and other health-related companies that could interfere with and undermine public health policy;
It also established and mandated an expert group
i. to review and collect information in respect of the practice that has evolved at Party level, taking into account the work being done in relevant international fora, and support Parties, as relevant, to strengthen their criminal and civil liability regimes, including administrative measures, to ensure accountability and deterrence, improve access to justice, and allow for effective remedies for those affected by tobacco harms, on a voluntary basis and upon request by the Parties;
ii. to provide options for Parties to detect and counter tobacco industry efforts to evade applicable liability regimes or to undermine tobacco control, including through corporate reorganization or investments;
iii. to explore the possible development of a methodology that estimates or quantifies the health care costs borne due to tobacco use, in order to support Parties in collecting evidence to be used in tobacco-related litigation;
