Every day, tobacco and nicotine industries use carefully engineered products and deceptive tactics to hook a new generation of users and keep existing ones.
Tobacco and nicotine industries use insidious strategies to make their harmful products appealing, especially to young people.
Manipulative product designs, attractive flavours, and glamourized marketing create a false sense of security and evoke desirability. We need to break the illusion.
Nicotine and tobacco products are highly addictive and designed to sustain use, trapping users in a cycle of dependence. Additives mask the harshness of tobacco, making it easier to start and harder to quit.
Removing the appeal of these products through stricter regulations is essential to protecting current and future generations from harm.
And here at the McCabe Centre for Law and Cancer, we’ve been taking action with legal and policy change in cancer control since 2012.
To date, we’ve assisted on plain packaging laws across more than 20 countries benefiting over 500 million people.
Rolah McCabe’s Legacy
Rolah McCabe’s courage in challenging the tobacco industry inspires our ongoing fight for justice, cancer prevention and corporate accountability.
In 2001, terminally ill Australian woman Rolah McCabe made a brave decision to take on one of the world’s biggest tobacco companies, holding them responsible for her lifelong addiction to cigarettes and lung cancer.
Her case against British American Tobacco Australia exposed the company’s deliberate destruction of evidence to evade accountability. Though the Victorian Supreme Court initially ruled in her favor, the decision was overturned on appeal and later settled confidentially.
Rolah's battle highlighted the power imbalance between individuals and corporations, and sent ripples around the world.
Rolah died of lung cancer at 52, but her family and lawyers continued the fight, which then enabled seed funding for the McCabe Centre for Law & Cancer, ensuring her legacy would continue in exposing lies and protecting lives.
This Saturday, 31 May, is World No Tobacco Day, and as we remember Rolah McCabe’s legacy, let’s continue this fight. We know that so many countries need support to deal with the challenges they’ll face from an industry which will relentlessly lobby governments, challenge legitimate laws and develop new tactics and addictive products to trap future generations.
Together, we must expand our work toward stronger regulations on tobacco and nicotine products, and enact comprehensive public health laws and policies to continue to protect our future generations.
#WorldNoTobaccoDay2025