February 20th is World Day of Social Justice. The UN General Assembly recognizes that “social development and social justice are indispensable for the achievement and maintenance of peace and security within and among nations and that, in turn, social development and social justice cannot be attained in the absence of peace
February 15, 2022 Dear Dr. Califf, Congratulations on your confirmation as the new FDA Commissioner. In addition to sending our congratulations on behalf of our staff and Board, I am writing to introduce our organization, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and also to commend and thank you for your
“Health is a fundamental human right indispensable for the exercise of other human rights. Every human being is entitled to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health conducive to living a life in dignity.” – the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights When we talk about human
As Susan Sontag once wrote, “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify
Guest Author: Dr. Carolyn Dresler After recently retiring from income-producing work, I found myself revising my will. I still volunteer my time for causes of importance to me, like ASH. So, while I was working on my will, I was similarly thinking about those causes that are important to me
ASH’s work is based on the principle that the behavior of the tobacco industry – producing, marketing, and selling addictive products that kill when use as intended – violates human rights, such as the right to health, that have been recognized at the highest level through international, regional, and national legal
Every December 10th is Human Rights Day, and this year (2021) the theme is “Equality- Reducing inequalities, advancing human rights.” For ASH, this theme is very welcome, as we strive to center our tobacco control work around these principles. This year in particular, ASH has been focused on the intersection
Guest Author: John Mirisch UC San Francisco Professor and distinguished anti-tobacco advocate Ruth Malone once pointed out that in the history of consumer products, there has never been anything deadlier than cigarettes. She went on to note that somebody would finally say that tobacco is too dangerous to be sold
Author: Gabrielle Ballweg, ASH Human Rights Policy and Communications Intern Arguably the most compelling justification for permitting cigarette sales in the U.S. is profit. However, when a U.S. industry inflicts 226.7 billion dollars in U.S. healthcare costs annually – in addition to causing 20% of all U.S. deaths – this
Author: Vivienne Brandt, ASH Policy and Communications Intern In 2003, the World Health Organization concluded negotiations of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which reaffirmed the right of all people to the highest attainable standard of health. This international treaty lays out the best practices to end the tobacco
The year 2020 brought much needed attention to social justice, and placed the right to health front and center in global public health. In a matter of months, we saw the world come to a halt because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, a pandemic that has made it even clearer
Author: Mitch Schuster, ASH Policy and Communications Intern The tobacco industry is frequently criticized for its product’s harmful effects on global health, financial security, and manipulative marketing tactics. However, one of the tobacco industry’s least recognized impacts on global populations has been the exploitation of child laborers working on tobacco
Statement from Laurent Huber, Executive Director, Action on Smoking and Health Brookline, MA Becomes 1st City in the U.S. to Ban Tobacco Sales to Anyone Born in the 21st Century WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 19, 2021 – This morning Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey approved Brookline’s first-in-the-nation Tobacco Free Generation
[en Français | en Español] 154 Organizations Call for Phasing Out Sales of Combustible Tobacco Products The lessons learned in 2020 from the bold actions taken to address the COVID-19 pandemic provide an opportunity to consider equally bold actions that will be required to tackle other global health pandemics. The undersigned organizations
Access to Smoking Cessation Support is a Human Right ASH and ICTC Release a Report in Advance of World No Tobacco Day, May 31st Contact: Megan Arendt arendtm@ash.org | (202) 390 – 9513 WASHINGTON, DC – May 18, 2021 – Legally-binding human rights norms implore or require governments to protect
Professor Joshua Pearce, the Richard Witte Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a Professor cross-appointed in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering and in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Michigan Technological University, wrote the following article in December 2018 and it was Published February
The FDA Agrees to Ban Menthol, To Protect African Americans The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) responds to a lawsuit filed by ASH, AATCLC, AMA, and NMA on Saving Black Lives WASHINGTON, DC – April 29, 2021 – Today, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it will
Media Contact: Megan Arendt arendtm@ash.org (202)390-9513 97 Organizations Agree, UN Human Rights Committee Must Address Menthol Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) leads 97 organizations from around the world in this public health appeal to end racial discrimination Washington, DC – April 21, 2021 – Today, as we continue to
Tobacco use disproportionately affects many marginalized populations, including racial and ethnic minorities, who have a long and documented history of being aggressively targeted by the tobacco industry. ASH supports those who categorize the tobacco industry’s aggressive marketing as institutional racism. Read more on that here> You might be thinking,
Before COVID-19, ASH already had a flexible work environment where all staff were encouraged to have a work from home set up, complete with our main phone line forwarding to cell phones. So when the world went remote, ASH staff didn’t miss a beat from their established home offices. That
Guest Blog Author: Michael Schwalbe, Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University When it comes to destroying Black lives, no modern American institution can match the tobacco industry. It isn’t just that 45,000 Black Americans die of tobacco-related diseases every year; it isn’t just that tobacco use is the
On March 29, 2021, Judge Janis Sammartino of the U.S. District Court for Southern California dashed the hopes of R.J. Reynolds and other plaintiffs seeking to overturn San Diego’s ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products. In a sometimes tersely-worded decision, Judge Sammartino denied plaintiff’s complaints and granted defendant’s
Today is International Women’s Day – a day to celebrate the progress that’s been made for women’s rights around the world, and a day to call for much-needed change. Cigarette smoking among women is declining in many developed countries, but unfortunately, this is not true everywhere. In many places, particularly
Submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on March 3, 2021.
Written by Laurent Huber, Executive Director of Action on Smoking & Health and WCTOH Advisory Board Member 25 February 2021 In addition to being a Development challenge, the tobacco epidemic is also increasingly being identified as an obstacle to achieving human rights objectives that have been recognized at the highest
