OBJECTIVE To analyze the passage of Costa Rica's 2012 tobacco control law. MATERIALS AND METHODS Review of legislation, newspaper articles, and key informant interviews. RESULTS Tobacco control advocates, in close collaboration with international health groups, recruited national, regional and international experts to testify in the Legislative Assembly, implemented grassroots advocacy camp...

Oral cancer is second most common cancer in Pakistan and one of the major contributing factors to its high incidence is smokeless tobacco (SLT) use. 5.3% of Pakistan's youth are current SLT users. The World Health Organization requires the signatories of its "Framework Convention on Tobacco Control" to officially ban the sale of tobacco products to minors. We reviewed the Government of Pakistan...

The Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC) is currently the most potent tool for implementation of tobacco control laws across the globe. The FCTC is derivative from previously constructed international human rights conventions. These previous conventions have enforcement mechanisms, unlike the FCTC. However, the FCTC relies on state parties to report periodically on its implementation...

AIMS This article outlines how the tobacco industry has undermined tobacco control efforts in Lebanon since the early 1970s. METHODS An analysis of online and on-site tobacco industry documents, reviews of newspapers, policy and other documents, and interviews with key policy makers were conducted. RESULTS Findings reveal how the weakness of tobacco control legislation in Lebanon has been t...

Films with smoking scenes should be rated to prevent children and adolescents from seeing these scenes and starting to smoke cigarettes, according to a new WHO report, Smoke-free movies: from evidence to action. The report calls on governments to require health warnings to be shown before films containing smoking scenes, to ban the display of tobacco brands in films and to require film-makers t...

In this age of globalization, the outcome of tobacco control in one country is connected to events on the global stage. Tobacco control has become an increasingly consolidated global movement, catalyzed by the global tobacco control treaty, the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) as well as the Bloomberg Initiative. This global collective effort is necessa...