TY - JOUR T1 - Worldwide news and comment JF - Tobacco Control JO - Tob Control SP - 481 LP - 484 DO - 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2021-056941 VL - 30 IS - 5 AU - Karen Evans-Reeves AU - John Baker Y1 - 2021/09/01 UR - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/30/5/481.abstract N2 - All articles written by Karen Evans-Reeves and John Baker unless otherwise attributed. Ideas and items for News Analysis should be sent to k.a.evans-reeves@bath.ac.ukThe Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index 2020 revealed that Latin America faces some of the highest rates of industry interference in the world. Partnerships between government and tobacco companies over the illicit tobacco trade have enabled this interference to continue despite longstanding evidence of the tobacco industry’s complicity in the illicit tobacco trade.The illicit tobacco trade benefits tobacco companies by increasing the accessibility of their products, and decreases government revenues that could be used for tobacco control and public health efforts.In 2016, the Illicit Trade Observatory in Chile was created by the Chilean Chamber of Commerce, as a public-private partnership, “whose objective is to generate relevant information for the generation of public policies aimed at combating all forms of illegal trade”. The Observatory is composed of 13 public institutions, including the ministry of finance, the Chilean law enforcement agency, and the national customs and border control department, and several private actors such as British American Tobacco and the Chilean Chamber of Commerce. Since its inception, every report published by the Observatory on the illicit tobacco trade has either been conducted or commissioned by British American Tobacco.Unfortunately, the lack of independent data around illicit trade means governments rely on the statistics and reports prepared by the tobacco industry and its allies. Organisations such as the Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade, funded by Philip Morris International and the Latin American Alliance against Contraband (ALAC), whose members include transnational tobacco companies, produce reports that tend to overestimate the illicit tobacco trade. In Chile, while independent studies conducted by civil society and academic institutions in 2017 estimated 10.9% of tobacco products were illicit, the … ER -