Before 2020, I knew very little about tobacco control. My knowledge did not go beyond what most people know – that cigarettes are bad for your health and could kill you. Subsequently, tobacco harm reduction was a foreign concept to me, although it made logical sense. I volunteered in Lesotho with the Peace Corps; the […]

A Keynote Speech from the 2021 global tobacco and nicotine forum Download PDF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpGkl3d3BWg We are amid a revolution in nicotine technology. Thanks to massive investments in research and development, patents are being filed at a dizzying pace and the ramifications of this IP are being felt in the real world. Already, 100 million people […]

On May 20th of last year, the EU ban on the manufacture and sale of menthol cigarettes went into effect for the Union’s 27 member countries. This regulatory move was predicated on the view that such a ban would discourage people from starting smoking or encourage existing smokers to quit—thus contributing to general public health. […]

In Part I, I discussed failures in the implementation of the Global Strategy to Accelerate Tobacco Control 2019-2025 (GS2025). As that post indicates, there are many factors contributing to shortcomings on this front. In the current piece, I focus on one where a country, Thailand, which, in my opinion, is still facing challenges in reducing […]

It was an era in which we became accustomed to daily death tolls broadcast on TV; work, school, and play shifted to virtual space; and masks served as both a life-saving accessory and confounding controversy. On many fronts, the era was marked by despair, not only from the virus proper, but also from the isolation […]