Dear John, 

Earlier this year, I had the honor of being named the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids' new President and CEO. Since that time, I've traveled around the world meeting supporters like you who share my passion for using the power of advocacy to drive meaningful and positive change. It’s been an incredible journey.

Thanks to your support during the last year, we have made remarkable progress in the U.S. and around the world to protect children, advance health equity and save lives.

Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve accomplished together.

In the U.S., we’ve worked to protect young people and targeted communities from the harms of flavored tobacco products and to hold the tobacco industry accountable:

Youth e-cigarette use declined significantly. Thanks to effective public education campaigns and our efforts to end the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, e-cigarette use among high school students fell from 14.1% in 2022 to 10% in 2023. But there’s still work to be done: 2.1 million middle and high school students still use e-cigarettes, and nearly 90% of them use flavored products.

Big Tobacco was forced to tell the truth to the public. Starting this past July, the major U.S. tobacco companies were required to post signs about the deadly consequences of cigarette smoking in 220,000 stores – the final step in implementing the “corrective statements” a federal court first ordered the companies to make back in 2006 after finding that they lied to the public for decades. This is a long-overdue step to hold the tobacco industry accountable for their decades of lies. Our legal team fought alongside the U.S. Department of Justice to make this happen.

Globally, we achieved significant milestones:

Pakistan raised its tobacco tax 150%. This is the result of years of campaigning by our in-country partners – with close involvement from us – to beat back fierce tobacco industry opposition. It’s a big victory that will reduce tobacco use by an estimated 1.2 billion packs and save almost three million lives.

India restricted tobacco depictions on streaming platforms. With our support, the government of India required health warnings on screen during movies or other programs that depict tobacco use on streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. This is an important step to prevent these services from becoming the next vehicle for the tobacco industry to target youth. India is the first country to enact such a policy.

Our Global Health Advocacy Incubator has supported a number of policy victories that will address public health challenges and save lives around the world:

Cambodia guaranteed every birth and death will be recorded. The government adopted a new law that guarantees civil registration for every vital event that occurs within the country – regardless of the person’s nationality, citizenship, ethnicity, or geographical location – provides for system improvements across the whole civil registration structure, and removes obstacles for individuals to register their vital events. Globally, millions of deaths and births go unreported every year. This law represents monumental progress toward ending this in Cambodia.

The city of Rio de Janeiro prohibited the sale of ultra-processed food in all preschool and elementary schools. This new policy will protect more than one million students in Brazil from these unhealthy food products.

As you can see, John, we’ve achieved so much over the last year. But our work is far from complete.

During this end of year giving season, I hope you can help us build on this progress by making a gift to support the life-saving work of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and our Global Health Advocacy Incubator.

Thank you for being on this journey with us.

With gratitude,

P.S. – In case you missed it, our just-released Annual Report is available now! Learn more about the progress we’ve made in the U.S. and around the world.