International Issues

Trade and Tobacco

Exclude Tobacco Products from Trade Agreements


These tobacco industry tactics underscore the importance of excluding tobacco products from trade and investment agreements. Free trade is intended to make products more available to more consumers, but there is a global consensus in support of reducing tobacco use.

Trade and investment agreements should not promote or increase use of tobacco products, and they should not prohibit any nation from using its sovereign authority to protect public health by taking action to reduce tobacco use. International investment agreements provide protections for foreign investors, but they were not intended to put constraints on a state’s right to implement genuine public interest regulatory measures to protect the health of its citizens. The best approach is to exclude tobacco products entirely from trade and investment agreements; at a minimum, tobacco control measures should be protected from challenges by the tobacco industry under the Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions.

Governments around the world must take these steps to protect their own authority to reduce tobacco use, and to thwart the tobacco industry’s efforts to use trade agreements to undermine tobacco control policies.

In a historic step forward for public health, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement recently reached between the United States and 11 other countries includes a provision that prevents tobacco companies from using the TPP to launch legal attacks on tobacco control measures. Specifically, this provision will allow countries that are party to the TPP to elect to deny the benefits of Investor-State Dispute Settlement for any claim against a tobacco control measure. This would prevent claims such as those against Uruguay and Australia, described below, from being brought under the TPP. (This provision includes language specifically exempting tobacco leaf, and the TPP imposes no barriers to trade between the U.S. and the other TPP countries of tobacco leaf or tobacco products.)

Special Treatment for a Uniquely Lethal Product

The rationale for excluding tobacco products from trade agreements is strong and simple. Trade agreements are intended to promote and expand trade in beneficial products. Far from being beneficial, tobacco products are uniquely lethal and highly addictive. Used as directed, tobacco products kill 1 in 2 users.

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death around the world. Without urgent action, tobacco products will kill one billion people in the 21st Century. Freer trade in tobacco products directly conflicts with the goal of saving lives by stemming this global epidemic.


Nations across the globe have made legally binding commitments to implement these and other measures to curb the tobacco epidemic by signing on to the world’s first public health treaty, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). All 12 TPP countries have ratified or signed the treaty.

Big Tobacco Uses Trade Laws to Fight Health Protections

Tobacco companies and their allies have been using trade and investment agreements to challenge and undermine tobacco control policies. In recent years:



  • Philip Morris International sued Australia over its new law requiring plain cigarette packaging under an Australia-Hong Kong bilateral investment treaty.


Tobacco is simply not like any other consumer product, and should not be treated as one in trade and investment agreements. What’s at stake is the authority of nations to take actions that literally would save millions of lives.

In March 2015, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the Anti-Tobacco Trade Litigation Fund, a new joint venture managed by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. This initiative provides financial and technical legal support to low- and middle-income countries that are facing claims, or threats of claims, against their tobacco control laws by the tobacco industry under international trade and investment agreements.