On 27 January 2021 (15:00 – 16:30) CET a new webinar of ENSP-ECTC series will take place – “LOOSE TOBACCO Project”. This session is co-hosted with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Investigative journalists representing the organisation, Alessia CERANTOLA and Andrei CIURCANU, will share the results of their recent work unveiling the tactics and misconduct of the tobacco industry under 2 topics: illicit trade (“Without Trace”) and promotion of heated tobacco (“Blowing Unsmoke”).

“Without Trace” is a series of articles exposing how the companies, collectively known as Big Tobacco, are still trying to subvert worldwide efforts to curb cigarette smuggling. In the EU, Big Tobacco spent years working to control a new system designed to make their supply chains more transparent, secretly using supposedly independent companies to sell their own potentially flawed “track-and-trace” software. In the meantime investigations have found that Big Tobacco is also targeting fast-growing markets in the developing world.

“Blowing Unsmoke” reveals how Philip Morris International, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies, is promoting its new star product, the IQOS, as everything except what it really is: a tobacco delivery device. PMI launched a global campaign last year called “Unsmoke Your World,” urging smokers to give up cigarettes. But while PMI says it wants the world to be smoke-free, it has no intention of making it tobacco-free.

Join the webinar to learn the insights of these investigations and connect with their authors!

Tobacco and vaping industry representatives are not accepted to attend this event. The same rule applies to any entity or individual advancing their interests linked to the tobacco and vaping industry in a commercial or non-commercial manner. There is a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests. (WHO-FCTC Art.5.3 – Guiding principles)