DUBLIN, IRELAND
23 - 25 JUNE 2025
The global tobacco epidemic continues to represent one of the biggest public health challenges of our times. The tobacco industry continues to market cigarettes and its other products aggressively, fight effective tobacco control policies, and is constantly introducing new harmful and addictive nicotine products, which threatens to undermine progress made in the 20 years since the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) entered into force.
Tobacco use continues to kill over 7 million people each year, the overwhelming majority of which are in low- and middle-income countries.[1] It costs the world’s economies over US$2 trillion annually in healthcare expenditure and lost productivity, undermines sustainable development, and exacerbates poverty, food insecurity and labour exploitation.[2]
Against the backdrop of global uncertainty and instability, we cannot afford to lose tobacco control as a central, indispensable aspect of efforts to safeguard and improve global health, and efforts to reduce tobacco use must remain fully integrated into the global health and development agenda. To this end, we, the delegates of the World Conference on Tobacco Control 2025, call upon the governments of the world’s nations to accelerate the implementation of all measures in the WHO FCTC in order to end this epidemic by:
Dr. Fenton Howell is medical graduate of University College Dublin, Ireland, and completed higher specialist training in Public Health Medicine in 1991. He is the former National Tobacco Control Adviser to the Department of Health, is a Clinical Associate Professor in Public Health in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at Trinity College Dublin, and is a board member of the National Cancer Registry Ireland. Dr. Fenton Howell is a Fellow of both the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of Ireland and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. He is a past Dean of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of Ireland, and past President of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, the All Ireland Social Medicine Group and the Irish Medical Organization. He has previously served on the boards of ASH Ireland, the Tobacco Free Research Institute, the European Network on Smoking Prevention, the Institute of Public Health in Ireland and the Medical Bureau of Road Safety, and he chaired the Prevention Working Group for the Ireland–Northern Ireland–United States National Cancer Institute Cancer Consortium.
Dr. Gan Quan, PhD, is Senior Vice President at Vital Strategies, where he leads the Tobacco Control Division, comprising a global team working with governments and civil society partners around the world to reduce tobacco use, the leading preventive cause of deaths worldwide. The Division has supported work in more than 50 low- and middle-income countries with a focus on evidence-based tobacco control policies and implementation, capacity building, and countering interference from the tobacco industry.
Dr. Gan Quan has more than 15 years of international experience in health system building, policy implementation, government partnership, and policy research. Prior to joining Vital Strategies, Dr. Gan Quan spent 14 years with the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), first as Technical Advisor, then Director of China Office, and most recently as Director of Tobacco Control Department. Before joining The Union, Dr. Gan Quan was a research fellow at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at University of California, San Francisco.
