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Bayer Lecture in Health & Biotech

Ending the Forever Pandemic of Global Tobacco

Tobacco dependence remains the world’s leading cause of preventable illness. In the last century, it claimed 100 million lives; in this century, the toll is projected to reach one billion. The tobacco pandemic has been fueled by a multinational industry that has deftly glamorized an addictive product and marketed it as an attractive social norm. But over the past number of decades, public health efforts such as the 2005 World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control have made progress on deglamorizing tobacco use, primarily in developed countries. Today, the tobacco industry is reinventing itself by promoting products such as e-cigarettes that could enhance “harm reduction” for smokers unwilling or unable to stop, even as it continues to market and distribute cigarettes that cause harm in the first place. In this talk, Howard Koh explores potential future regulatory strategies to bolster public health and thereby diminish the enormous economic and human costs of global tobacco consumption.