Regulating duty free sales and tobacco advertising in airports: a call for action

Excerpt

According to the United Nations' World Tourism Organization, there were an estimated 880 million international travelers in 2009, or roughly 13% of the world's population [1, 2]. While tobacco remains one of the world's leading causes of preventable disease and death, prompting numerous governments around the world to implement policies to protect the public's health, many international airports remain exempt from tobacco control restrictions. Tobacco advertising and tobacco sales are largely unregulated in many international airports, exposing hundreds of millions of travelers each year to the tobacco industry's influence. Consequently, airports may represent one of the last remaining havens for the tobacco industry. …