Towards health with justice: making the tobacco industry accountable through administrative liability.

For many decades, the transnational tobacco industry has evaded the consequences of harming people and the planet. Despite selling a deadly product, it has continued to remain one of the most profitable industries in the world, now venturing into 'wellness and pharmaceutical' businesses as part of its diversification strategy. Meanwhile, efforts to make the tobacco industry pay through court systems have not progressed due to the inherent challenges within the judicial systems in most countries. This paper explores mechanisms for ensuring accountability through administrative liability, including the use of compensation mechanisms and adjudicatory bodies. Such mechanisms operationalise vital principles and practices derived from international law, such as the imposition of effective, proportionate, and dissuasive non-criminal sanctions, victims' right to compensation, and 'polluter pays' principles. Measures such as taxation, surcharges, penalties, financial guarantees or insurance, along with the establishment of adjudicatory bodies and trust funds, are discussed. In order to hold the tobacco industry to account for the wide range of harms caused by its products and its misconduct; policies on 'liability' must clearly articulate how the industry will compensate for past and future harms in a manner that deters it from causing further damage.

Tobacco is a threat to the environment and human health.

The 2022 World No-Tobacco Day campaign focuses on tobacco's threat to the environment. It aims to raise awareness on the environmental impact of tobacco throughout its lifecycle, demonstrating its destructive impact not only on human health, but also on the environment and the planet. It also aims to expose efforts of the tobacco industry to "greenwash" their reputation and products by increasingly portraying their activities as environmentally friendly.The campaign messages demonstrate the varied ways that tobacco cultivation, production, distribution, consumption, and post-consumer waste threaten the environment. Tobacco destroys forests, harms the soil, affects water supply, pollutes the air, and contributes to other types of unsustainable environmental damage.