How we beat Big Tobacco Advertising

It may seem hard to imagine now - but it used to be commonplace for people to smoke in the cinema, on the bus and train, and in restaurants and cafes. It used to be normal that children would see cigarette billboards on their route to school and that tobacco brands would line the sides of pitches at major sporting events.

After decades of campaigning, a new normal has been established that recognises and limits the harms of tobacco advertising. Tobacco promotion in the UK was finally banned in 2003 and smoking indoors in public places in 2007.

For climate and health campaigners today there are valuable lessons to be learned from the fight against big tobacco. Cigarettes and polluting products have similar qualities. Both tobacco smoke and car exhausts contain similar toxins such as benzene, carbon monoxide and polycyclic hydrocarbons. The impacts of air pollution and tobacco smoke are both differentiated by wealth - with underlying health conditions meaning lower income households are worse affected than richer households.