The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: The annual shareholder meetings of the world's two largest multinational tobacco companies and their subsidiaries offer a unique opportunity to draw attention to the companies' aggressive promotion of death and disease and efforts to thwart effective tobacco control regulations around the world. Publicizing these companies' egregious conduct is useful in counteracting the companies' public relations campaigns and maintaining public scrutiny of the companies' profit-source.

Methods: In the U.S., hundreds of youth from around the U.S. and world have converged at the Altria/Philip Morris shareholders meeting to expose and denounce the company's methods of recruiting "replacement smokers" worldwide. U.S. nurses have also attended the Altria meeting, bearing witness to the suffering caused by the company's continued promotion of cigarettes and questioning the company's claims to be "responsible". In the UK, an annual alternative social report has been issued to reveal the truth behind British American Tobacco's corporate propaganda and publicized via media events held outside BAT's annual meetings. And in Sri Lanka, hundreds of youth have rallied outside the Ceylon Tobacco Company annual meeting, with a coffin and wreaths to symbolize the 26,000 Sri Lankans killed by tobacco annually.

Results: The actions taken by groups in the U.S., UK, and Sri Lanka around tobacco company annual meetings have garnered significant local, national, and international media coverage and helped maintain controversy over the vector of the world's largest preventable public health epidemic. Actions around the meetings could be amplified further through increased collaboration with advocacy groups in other countries.