It's World No Tobacco Day today.
Readers will join me, I'm sure, in congratulating the University of Bath's Tobacco Control Research Group which has received a Special Recognition Award from the WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Previous winners of World No Tobacco Day Awards include former public health minister Jane Ellison who received her award in 2016. According to ASH:
The award recognises her political leadership and determination in overseeing the introduction of a major public health reform, standardised ‘plain’ packaging of tobacco, and her ongoing commitment to tobacco control.
Ellison lost her seat in parliament in 2017 but subsequently got a job in Geneva working for ... the WHO!
In 2018 it was ASH Scotland's turn to be recognised. According to the WHO:
ASH Scotland has shown strong leadership in persuading the Scottish Government to announce an end-game target of a tobacco-free Scotland by 2034, one of only a few nations to have done so.
ASH Scotland was instrumental in persuading the Scottish government to announce in 2013 that it would implement plain packaging for tobacco products, successfully lobbied for Scotland’s national target to halve the number of children exposed to tobacco smoke in the home by 2020 […] and successfully advocated for a bill outlawing smoking in a vehicle with a child present.
And let's not forget ASH (UK), recipients of their own World No Smoking Day award in 2011.
But it's the award for the University of Bath's TCRG that makes me laugh. According to the WHO:
TCRG was selected in acknowledgement of its enormous contribution to tobacco control over the past decade. Research results and published evidence by TCRG have helped to change attitudes towards the tobacco industry and secure policy change nationally and globally.
For over 10 years, TCRG has worked relentlessly to expose industry attempts to weaken, block and delay tobacco-control measures. At the heart of its work is the innovative knowledge-exchange platform Tobacco Tactics, which instantly provides academically rigorous, accessible and policy-relevant research to those who need it. It is the go-to resource for tobacco industry insight, receiving hundreds of thousands of views each year.
The Tobacco Tactics website will be familiar to many readers because I have written about it several times, the first time in October 2012 - ‘Tobacco Tactics - what do you think of it so far?‘.
I wasn't impressed then and I'm not impressed now, despite the long overdue facelift it received after the TCRG received a financial injection from the self-styled 'global industry watchdog' STOP.
The content however was unchanged/more of the same.
Far be it for me to rain on their parade though so I'll leave you with this: 'Global accolade for Bath research team'.