2024 Annual Report

ASH is proud of its achievements in 2024, but we recognize that tobacco continues to be the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. and the world.

While we have helped reduce smoking prevalence, global population growth means there are more people smoking at the end of 2024 than there were at the beginning. We note our progress but keep our eyes on the future. As we often say, our loftiest goal is to put ourselves out of business because there is no more business to be done.

ASH’s human rights-based approach to the tobacco epidemic, a tree that we planted over a decade ago, bore a bumper crop of fruit in 2024. The ultimate expression of human rights in the tobacco context is to eliminate tobacco sales and the tobacco industry. Jurisdictions with endgame laws in place nearly doubled in 2024, and the first steps were taken to expand the number of people protected by endgame laws from a few hundred thousand to many millions.

Even so, as we write these words, we face perhaps the biggest challenge ASH has ever faced in its nearly 60-year existence. In the U.S., the federal tobacco control infrastructure has been almost completely dismantled. The loss of funding, as well as human experience and expertise, is a grave threat to public health, and imperils decades of progress. Critical research, both in the U.S. and abroad, has been cancelled. ASH depends on scientific research to develop best practice policies. At the local level, cessation support, public health education and tobacco policy enforcement will see catastrophic cuts.

With the federal government out of the picture, the need for civil society engagement has never been greater. ASH will step up, of course, but we can’t replace hundreds or even thousands of public health professionals. We will need to find more resources and strive to increase our impact with what we already have. And what we already have is the best and most experienced team in the field. The challenge is great, as is our confidence.