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Blowing the Lid Off of Tobacco and Heart Health: A WHO Tobacco and Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) Knowledge Summary

Tobacco use and second-hand smoke exposure are responsible for 1.9 million avoidable deaths from coronary heart disease, or CHD, every year. That is approximately 21% of total CHD deaths. And yet, in many countries, the links between tobacco use and heart disease remain poorly understood or largely ignored. Findings from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey…

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What do we know about tobacco use and COVID-19?

There has been a great deal of discussion in the news media about the potential relationship between COVID-19 and tobacco use, including smoking and vaping.  We address some of the most asked questions here. Does smoking increase the likelihood of contracting COVID-19? There isn’t yet direct evidence that a history of smoking makes an individual…

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Tobacco use remains the indisputably leading preventable cause of cancer

This Tuesday, February 4, marked World Cancer Day.  In honor of the occasion, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released coordinated reports on the status of cancer prevention research and recommendations for combatting the disease worldwide.  IARC’s World Cancer Report: Cancer Research for Cancer Prevention provides a…

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Summers-Bloomberg Report Emphasizes Role of Excise Taxes in Health Promotion

The father of free markets, Adam Smith, made the case in his seminal book The Wealth of Nations (written in 1776) that “Sugar, rum, and tobacco, are commodities which are no where necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.” Today, the Bloomberg…