Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced an additional four-year, $420 million commitment in support of global tobacco reduction efforts.

The pledge is the foundation’s fourth investment in the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, boosting its total commitment to more than $1.58 billion since 2005. The initiative works with national and local governments to implement the World Health Organization’s (WHO) package of policies and initiatives called MPOWER, which supports measures that are proven to reduce tobacco use and protect people from harm, such as creating smoke-free public places, banning tobacco advertising, increasing taxes on tobacco products, requiring graphic warnings on cigarette packaging, and launching mass-media public awareness campaigns. More than half the new commitment ($280 million) will support efforts to reduce tobacco use in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and the remaining $140 million will target reducing e-cigarette use among teenagers in the United States.

According to Bloomberg Philanthropies, global smoking rates have declined from 22.7 percent to 17.5 percent since 2007, with 750 billion fewer cigarettes sold in 2021 than in 2012.

“Over the past two decades, we’ve made major progress in reducing tobacco use and the death and disease connected to it, but it continues to take a devastating toll, and it remains the leading cause of preventable death,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and the WHO global ambassador for noncommunicable diseases and injuries. “This latest investment will help to spread strategies that have proven so effective at saving lives—including smoke-free laws and advertising restrictions—to more nations and communities around the world.”

(Photo credit: Solid Colours)