The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: This work is exploring the relationships between Canada's Federal Tobacco Control Strategy, international tobacco control efforts, and the tobacco industry. Effective Canadian efforts to reduce tobacco consumption have served as a model and been adapted and widely adopted internationally. Therefore, while the tobacco industry is likely to be strongly affected internationally by efforts initially undertaken in Canada to reduce tobacco consumption, they wield little influence, politically, socially, or economically, within Canada to influence these outcomes. Similarly, it is anticipated tobacco reduction efforts in other countries could generate comparable economic, health, social and political benefits with few harmful impacts.

Methods: This work remains in a conceptual phase and has only briefly reviewed and summarized some Canadian data.

Results: To date, a brief review of literature investigating Canadian health costs and benefits of the tobacco industry has been undertaken. This has been compared to tobacco industry profits in Canada and globally. Several questions have been formulated to stimulate dialogue. Input is being sought to help guide future research directions.