Year in review 2025

What an action-packed year 2025 has been: conferences, meetings, online seminars; project days, learning stations, youth club party; videos, fact sheets and social media. We met a huge number of people with whom we discussed the supply chains of cigarettes, disposable e-cigarettes and more. Our partners from Brazil, Bangladesh, Zambia and Malawi gave us insights into alternatives to tobacco cultivation and their commitment to better tobacco control.

Status quo: Supply chains of tobacco and nicotine products

There has been no significant change in the environmental and human rights impacts of the supply chains of tobacco and nicotine products. We demonstrated this impressively with our exhibition ‘Raw Materials for Tobacco and Nicotine Products’ at the DGP Congress in Leipzig, the Congress on Addiction in Berlin and an event in Rostock. On all occasions, we gave presentations and answered questions from participants working in health professions in the areas of pneumology, addiction prevention and cessation.
At the same time, we published a large series of posts on our social media channels about the environmental consequences and human rights violations associated with the extraction of various raw materials for tobacco and nicotine products.

Change: We share our knowledge

This year, we placed particular emphasis on training and informing multipliers in order to enable more people across Germany to integrate environmental and human rights issues into their prevention work. We presented our educational activities to students of childhood studies at the University of Stendal, as well as at a Berlin meeting of addiction prevention teachers and at a digital symposium for educational professionals, organised by the Lower Saxony State Office for the Protection of Minors. Invited by the Hessian State Office for Addiction Issues, we explained the environmental consequences of tobacco and raw material supply chains to addiction prevention stakeholders and considered together how this knowledge can be applied in their work.

Change: We discuss steps towards sustainability

In 2025, interest in our educational work and learning resources more than doubled – our interactive methods are in high demand. At various schools, we worked with pupils from Year 6 upwards to explore the global connections between tobacco cultivation and raw material production. We discussed with them how abuses in supply chains could be addressed and which sustainable solutions people in the Global South are proposing. Project days in particular offered an opportunity to talk to young people about how all this relates to them and their future.

To this end, our education experts developed new materials in the form of quizzes, experiments, physical activities and talk show discussions. These will soon be available on our website.

We were represented at extracurricular addiction prevention events with learning stations and were able to give numerous young people food for thought – on global economic relations, environmental issues, children’s rights and their own future.

Likewise, we also received food for thought from young people for the future, which we shared on social media: more than ever, the participation of children, teenagers and young adults is needed to successfully shape tobacco control measures. At COP11, the delegation of young people demanded that their participation should not be limited to attending COP negotiations. They also want to play a formative role in the entire process of international tobacco control and be supported in doing so.

Change: We learn from partners

Alternative livelihoods to tobacco cultivation continued to be an important focus in 2025. In a trilingual online seminar on World Food Day, we joined participants in learning how the transition from tobacco to organic food production can be achieved. Two experts from Brazil and Bangladesh described, among other things, what kind of support is important for farmers and how market access can be achieved.

At the same time, we published new video clips from Brazil in our video series on a tobacco-free agriculture. We started the series at the beginning of the year with two videos from Malawi. In these videos, farmers vividly and practically describe why and how they stopped growing tobacco and how their lives have changed with organic farming. Our brand new factsheet on the variety of alternatives to tobacco cultivation does provide additional information on this topic.

In a session at the 23rd German Conference on Tobacco Control (23rd DKT) in December, we looked at tobacco control in the Global South. Two experts from Zambia and Bangladesh reported on the current status of tobacco control legislation in their respective countries. The focus was on the conflicting goals of the policy areas in the tension between agriculture, economy and health.

Change: We make political demands

Early in the year, during the coalition negotiations following the general election, we joined forces with numerous health and civil society organisations to make our voice heard. As part of the Initiative “Kinder ohne Alkohol und Nikotin” (Children Without Alcohol and Nicotine), we addressed an appeal to the negotiators: ‘You are shaping the future – include a law in the coalition agreement that protects children and young people from alcohol and nicotine marketing.’ If we want to protect children and young people, marketing for alcohol and nicotine products must be stopped completely.

We continued to pursue this issue on World No Tobacco Day, drawing attention on our social media channels to how the tobacco and nicotine industry uses sophisticated products, thousands of flavours and targeted marketing tactics to attract a new generation of consumers.

At the same time, we continued to campaign for the German Supply Chain Act and the EU Supply Chain Directive. These laws are important tools for ending exploitative child labour in tobacco cultivation. On World Day Against Child Labour, we called for the signing of an urgent petition to German Chancellor Merz to advocate for the preservation and effective implementation of the supply chain laws.

Finally, on the occasion of the COP11 (Conference of the Parties to the FCTC) and of the 23rd DKT in Heidelberg, we highlighted the influence of the tobacco industry as a major obstacle to tobacco control. This influence on political decision-makers, who are supposed to champion public health, must be urgently and significantly restricted. We intend to carry this demand forward into 2026.

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