Abstract

Although governments have imposed controls on tobacco company behaviour, they have not yet aligned tobacco industry goals to public health objectives. As a result, tobacco companies have delayed or diminished the impact of imposed public health measures and have not contributed to curbing the epidemic of tobacco use. Over the past decade, several regulatory innovations have been proposed as ways to better align industry actions with public health needs, but none have been put in place. These policy suggestions share the goal of providing a supply-side complement to conventional demand reduction strategies, but they differ in the assumptions they make and in the regulatory and governance approaches they take. Similarly, differing views on ideology and political context within the tobacco control community and between governments may hinder the establishment of a global consensus on the ideal supply-side intervention. A government willing to implement innovative supply-side strategies as part of a tobacco control endgame may not require such consensus if factors specific to their national public health systems or political contexts are supportive.