Year in review 2024

In 2024, we continued to examine the status quo in the tobacco industry’s supply chains and explored steps for a sustainable change towards a tobacco-free world. We learned a lot from our partners in Bangladesh, Peru, Chile, Malawi and Brazil and shared this knowledge with young people, students and teachers, youth club staff, health professionals, politicians and civil society.

Status quo: Electronic tobacco and nicotine products

In March, we published a new exhibition: Raw materials for tobacco and nicotine products [German only]. Now we can show to different audiences what it looks like at the earliest stage of the products’ supply chains. We shed light on the impact of the extraction of raw materials such as bauxite, lithium and copper as well as tobacco, cellulose and cocoa, which are used in cigarettes, disposable e-cigarettes, water pipes and tobacco heaters. Since its launch, the exhibition has toured several events, including the German Conference on Tobacco Control in Heidelberg, giving health experts an understanding of issues in the production of tobacco and nicotine products.

Status quo: Supply chains of cigarettes

Our core topic, the human rights and environmental impact of tobacco, was also in high demand in 2024. Articles on the environmental and climate impact of the cigarette industry appeared in the German Yearbook on Addiction and in the German professional journal Atemwegs- und Lungenkrankheiten. Our Big Tobacco exhibition informed professionals at the Congress on Poverty and Health in Berlin and during the Sustainability Days in Ludwigsburg about the impact of the entire production and consumption chain of tobacco products.

In December, we also published a new brochure. Unfair supply chains: Focus on the Tobacco Industry sheds light on the raw materials and the players in the tobacco/cigarette supply chain and uses the German Supply Chain Act to analyze human rights risks inherent in tobacco cultivation. Finally, at the German Conference on Tobacco Control, we presented the symposium “Taking the tobacco industry to account: supply chain law and human rights litigation”. Donald Makoka, co-author of the brochure, joined us to report on tobacco cultivation in Malawi and on the lawsuit filed by tobacco farmers against two multinational cigarette companies for exploitation and unjust enrichment.

Change: How tobacco farmers are changing the world

Tobacco farmers in Brazil are also taking legal action against raw tobacco companies to hold them accountable for failures in occupational health and safety. Raquel Torres Gurgel reported on this in a chapter of our supply chain brochure. Tobacco farmers in Brazil have not only been active in holding companies accountable to address human rights abuses. They have also taken their own steps towards a sustainable, climate-friendly agriculture – without tobacco.

This transition from tobacco cultivation to food production was the focus of our communication and social media work in the summer. We covered how smallholder women farmers in Brazil are using traditional seeds and community organization to ensure crop diversity and how a biodiversity project in Zimbabwe is contributing to income security without tobacco.

We will soon be providing a small insight into the efforts of farmers in Malawi and publish two video clips – be curious and stay tuned!

Change: Global learning to enhance addiction prevention

Our education officers supported many young people in taking a deep dive into the supply chains of tobacco and nicotine products. They held project and sustainability days at schools, offered learning stations at various events, held workshops in youth clubs and a community garden. In order to pass on their knowledge to facilitators and teachers, they provided information at networking meetings and offered online training on the topic.

In February, we released our video “Environmental hazard of disposable e-cigarettes: Time to act!” which we also use in our education activities. The video clarifies: the extraction of raw materials for disposable e-cigarettes is destroying the environment and violating human rights in the Global South. People from Bangladesh, Chile and Peru have their say and explain how they are taking action against these rights violations and what they are demanding for their environment, their lives and their future. These demands also included the call for the adoption of a strong EU supply chain law. We also supported this call by joining the ongoing campaigns for the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive which was finally adopted in May 2024.

Brilliantly, our youth volunteer created a factsheet aimed specifically at young people. The factsheet informs them about the health risks and environmental damage caused by disposable e-cigarettes. It also alerts them on how influencers are aggressively marketing these products on social media.

Change: Marketing for nicotine must be banned

This year, we also paid close attention to the end of the supply chain, namely the marketing of tobacco and nicotine products. On World No Tobacco Day, we joined hands with 14 health and civil society organizations to call for a law to protect children and young people from the marketing of tobacco and nicotine products.

To implement this demand, we jointly formed the initiative Children Without Alcohol and Nicotine, which went public with its demands on World No Tobacco Day.

On World Children’s Day in September, we published our new factsheet How marketing for tobacco and nicotine products violates children’s rights, together with 15 other organizations as part of the initiative. We show how marketing affects children and young people and how children’s rights to life and health, to information and to protection from addictive substances are impaired as a result.

In 2024, together with our partners, we took several steps against abuses in the supply chains of tobacco and nicotine products and towards a tobacco-free world. We are particularly encouraged by our work in alliances and the feedback from our cooperation partners. This gives us momentum for the year ahead.

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