Abolition by design: implementing the dismantling of the commercial tobacco and nicotine industry.

Authors

Raglan Maddox, Shane Kawenata Bradbrook

Published in

Health promotion international. Volume 41. Issue 5. Sep 01, 2026.

Abstract

The commercial tobacco and nicotine industry continues to drive preventable disease and death globally. Despite progress in tobacco control, industry power, product diversification, market expansion, and policy interference have constrained the impact of incremental regulatory approaches. Downstream interventions, such as cessation supports and lung cancer screening, remain essential but respond to accumulated harms rather than preventing exposure at its source. This paper presents an implementation framework that positions abolition as a staged, governable, and legally supported public health strategy. Rather than a symbolic endpoint, abolition is conceptualized as a sequenced governance process through which industry structures can be dismantled using existing regulatory, fiscal, and enforcement mechanisms. These mechanisms are embedded within national systems and international instruments, including the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and international human rights instruments. Abolition is mischaracterized as consumer prohibition. This reflects a category error that evaluates abolition using prohibition logics, obscuring its focus on dismantling corporate production, supply, and profit infrastructures through existing governance and regulatory tools. The framework conceptualizes the industry as an ecosystem spanning corporate structures, product categories, supply chains, science distortion, and political influence. Each domain is mapped to disruption levers and institutions, with the aim of reducing implementation risk and limiting industry adaptation. Abolition is framed as a coordinated governance project across local, national, and global levels, with Indigenous peoples and young people recognized as leaders shaping accountability, prevention pathways, and norms. This approach illustrates how abolition-oriented reform may be administratively feasible, legally defensible, and relevant to advancing health equity.

PMID:
42870583
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 14 Oct 2026.

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