Making Tobacco Polluters Pay: Stop Tobacco Pollution Alliance (STPA) Campaign Launches in The New York Times

Stop Tobacco Pollution Alliance (STPA), a coalition of organizations behind the global movement to align plastics policies with tobacco control, launched a campaign to urge countries to ban cigarette filters and make tobacco polluters pay for the environmental damage they have caused over many decades.

To kick off the campaign, the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), a convenor of STPA, partnered with The New York Times on a post entitled ‘Uncovering the Truths Behind the Tobacco Industry’s Deception‘ to shed light on cigarette filters’ aggravating role in cancer and ocean pollution as well as the tobacco industry’s deceptive tactics to conceal the truth.

The post leads readers to tobaccoplastics.ggtc.world, which features environment country brief on the cost of tobacco’s plastic pollution, produced by STOP, a tobacco industry watchdog. The campaign, aims to encourage the public to:
A. Learn about and disseminate the cost of tobacco pollution in their country, and
B. Add their voice to support STPA’s message to ban filters and make tobacco polluters pay.

The campaign is aimed at gathering support for STPA’s message for the next round of the UN Plastic Pollution Treaty negotiations, INC-2, from May 29 to June 02, 2023 in Paris, France.

According to Mary Assunta, head of Global Research and Advocacy at STPA member GGTC, and author of the Global Tobacco Index, “The tobacco industry, unlike any other industry, is regulated by an international treaty. It cannot be part of policy making; its ‘corporate socially responsibility activities’ are simply a type of advertising, and it has deceived the world into thinking cigarette filters are beneficial when in fact they are linked to aggravation of cancers and severe marine pollution.”

The STPA calls on governments to align plastic policies with tobacco control. To learn about the damage caused by tobacco companies in your country and ‘how should tobacco companies pay for their pollution in your country’, visit tobaccoplastics.ggtc.world .

For more information on tobacco pollution and the Stop Tobacco Pollution Alliance, please contact ggtc@ggtc.world.