DON’T HATE THE INDUSTRY. ABOLISH IT.
Abolishing the tobacco and nicotine industry is necessary to save lives and protect health.
At the 2024 Oceania Tobacco Control Conference, Indigenous leaders, public health experts, and advocates issued a bold call to abolish the tobacco and nicotine industry. Below, you'll find guidance on how to resist industry influence, support the pathway to abolition, take action through art and advocacy, and share your message directly with the industry.
A PATHWAY TO ABOLITION
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Why first and throughout the abolition pathway? Youth engagement should be foundational and sustained, and they are key to protecting future generations.
Key Actions: Fund youth-led programs, intergenerational advocacy, and leadership training.
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Why now? You must first reduce reliance on tobacco/nicotine economies, especially in vulnerable communities.
Key Actions: Promote sustainable economic alternatives, local job creation, and support transitions for workers tied to the tobacco supply chain.
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Why now? Once dependence is reduced, you can begin divesting from harmful systems and reinvesting in health, care, and equity.
Key Actions: Shift public and private funding away from harmful industries and toward social services, housing, education, and Indigenous-led care systems.
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Why now? With structural dependence weakened and alternatives in place, you can aggressively restrict industry power.
Key Actions: Enact progressive taxation, cap and reduce profits, enforce prohibition of lobbying and marketing, and establish liability and public health levies.
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Why now? Once economic and regulatory groundwork is set, it becomes more feasible to eliminate availability.
Key Actions: Ban commercial sale and marketing, establish public control over any remaining supply (e.g., nicotine for cessation only).
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Why now? Ongoing monitoring ensures policies are implemented, compliance is enforced, and industry circumvention is detected.
Key Actions: Develop real-time data systems, compliance audits, community-reporting mechanisms, and policy evaluation loops.
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Why now? Once national frameworks are strong, align with international trade and health agreements to prevent loopholes and cross-border exploitation.
Key Actions: Collaborate through WHO FCTC, enforce cross-border trade bans, and close supply chain gaps.
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Why now? With structural changes underway, you can address legacy harms like deforestation, plastic waste from vapes, and pollution from tobacco farming.
Key Actions: Remediation, bans on toxic production processes, and reparations for environmental damage.
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Why now? Deep structural harm must be acknowledged and repaired as systems are dismantled.
Key Actions: Truth-telling commissions, reparations, land back policies, and Indigenous-led healing initiatives.
Download the Abolition postcard.
View the article at Health Promotion International (link available soon)
8 WAYS TO RESIST THE TOBACCO AND NICOTINE INDUSTRY
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Stress the magnitude of the tobacco problem, recognising the industry’s exploitative nature and the broader impacts on health, beyond Euro-Western definitions.
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Focus on structural changes over individual blame from tobacco industry harms. Strive for elimination rather than just incremental change
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Use person-centred & strengths based language. Replace the term ‘Black Market’ with ‘illicit tobacco’ to avoid racist connotations.
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Avoid industry terms that mislead and downplay harm and addiction (e.g. personal responsibility, personal choice, reduced risk, leads to illicit trade prohibition.)
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Avoid simplistic comparisons. Describe smoking and vaping inequities in the context of structural drivers like industry targeting, colonisation, and racism.
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The tobacco industry’s manipulative tactics attempt to downplay the harms of smoking and vaping. Be specific about the harm caused by their products. Hold industry accountable.
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Go beyond mere disclaimers (e.g. ‘no industry funding’) to address lobbying, marketing, and undermining health.
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Be specific about the harm caused by their products.
USING ART AND ADVOCACY TO TAKE ACTION
KILUNG MORUNBUL JUM (Death by Smoke)
This sculpture by the Left Ear Collective—Shannon Best, Frederick Beel, and Allen Lucini—confronts the Tobacco Industry’s deadly toll. With blood-red lungs framed in metal, it speaks to the 66 lives lost daily in Australia, including 37% of all deaths among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This is a call for truth, justice, and freedom from addiction. Kilung Morunbul Jum travels around Australia and invites you to tell the Tobacco Industry what you think and add your voice to the resistance.
TELL THE INDUSTRY WHAT YOU THINK
Have something to say to the Tobacco Industry? Now’s your chance.
You can share your message directly using this form, or if you have a postcard upload a photo of it, or return it in person.
Your message will travel with the artwork Kilung Morunbul Jum, as it visits communities and events and will eventually land in front of Big Tobacco. Kilung Morunbul Jum symbolises a collective journey of truth-telling, carrying community voices and messages of resistance to Big Tobacco to confront the Industry’s ongoing harm and demand accountability. Together, we’ll make sure they hear us.
For more information, or to share resources, ideas or messages, please contact us.