“We did not, in the end, find that this treaty accelerated decline in tobacco consumption.”
“…our methods, which represent – to our knowledge – the most rigorous evaluation of any international law ever conducted. We did not find any of the 3 kinds of effects.”
– Steven Hoffman, 2020
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros recently said “Since it came into force 13 years ago, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control remains one of the world’s most powerful tools for promoting public health,”.
But is it?
That’s what a study just published on bmj.com tried to investigate – one of which pulls together all the data we have on smoking rates, from 1970 to 2015, and then a quasi-experimental study which tries to model what the effect of the FCTC has had.
Steven Hoffman, and Matthieu Poirier from the Global Strategy Lab at York University join us to explain what their research means, and why it’s time to double down on our attempts to reduce smoking.
