The Race to a Tobacco Endgame (Tobacco Control)

During the past month alone, I have had an opportunity to participate in four different meetings—in Utah, Sweden, Canada and the USA—where ideas about how to achieve an ‘endgame’ for the tobacco epidemic were being discussed. Other previous meetings—in India, Finland and the UK—have been held over the last few years, and I know of several other such discussions. Even before the US Surgeon General`s 50th Anniversary report on the health consequences of smoking1 called explicitly for achieving a tobacco endgame and suggested a combination of policy strategies to do so, other countries such as Ireland, New Zealand, Finland and Scotland were having conversations that led them to set hard target dates by which they intend to reduce tobacco use and/or smoking prevalence to