8 March 2025
Today, we join women and girls around the globe to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) and there is plenty to cheer about the incredible, inspiring and phenomenal achievements all round. But there is still much to be done and there is one completely preventable problem which has entrapped millions of women and girls – tobacco.
Globally, about 224 million women and six million teenage girls smoke. Another 103 million women use smokeless tobacco. The figure for young girls vaping is running into the millions and is rising.
The IWD’s theme this year, “accelerate action”, is timely for we need to fast track efforts to halt the entrapment and sinister tactics of the tobacco and nicotine industry which is working round the clock to keep women addicted and hook new users among young girls.
The tobacco and nicotine industry’s harm to and exploitation of girls and women occurs in many ways (Figure 1), ranging from purchasing cheap tobacco leaves produced with child labor, harmful effects of its products on children, nicotine poisoning, designing products to appeal to adolescent girls and employing young women to promote its hazardous products on social media.
Figure 1: How the tobacco and nicotine industry harm women and girls
Philip Morris International (PMI) for example boasts of its gender equity policy and its “equal-pay certification” which it claims demonstrates it pays men and women equally for equal work everywhere in the 90 countries it operates. But the reality on the ground is very different. In Indonesia for example, a tobacco cash cow for PMI, child labor is rife in tobacco growing.
A 2021 Indonesian study, SaveSmallHands, found children earn between Rp. 7,000 to Rp. 20,000 (US$0.43 – $1.20) a day working in tobacco farms. The types of work carried out by children include growing and caring for tobacco plants, applying fertiliser and pesticides, harvesting tobacco leaves, curing tobacco leaves and detaching tobacco leaves that have been oven-baked from sticks. The children are not provided with any gloves or protective clothing.
The tobacco industry conducts corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities on child labour to distract attention from the fact that it sells a harmful product and benefits from cheap leaves produced using child labour among other things. After two decades of CSR activities by the industry sponsored charity, Eradicating Child Labour in Tobacco Foundation (ECLT), it is still unable to say how many children are involved in its industry supply chain. In Indonesia, ECLT supported project’s members linked to the industry, APTI and AMTI, opposed basic tobacco control measures such as ad bans and standardized packaging of tobacco products.
Since nicotine addiction is a lucrative business for the industry, more and more new nicotine products are entering the market, especially targeting girls. Regulators in the ASEAN region have not fully arrested smoking among teenage girls, and now find more teens are vaping than smoking in Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam (Table 1).
Table 1: Smoking prevalence and use of e-cigarettes among adolescent girls*
| Smoking % | E-cigarettes % | |
| Brunei | 2.2 | 7.1 |
| Cambodia | 2.8 | 0.8 |
| Indonesia | 2.4 | 2.7 |
| Lao PDR | 2.1 | 3.7 |
| Malaysia | 3.6 | 6.2 |
| Philippines | 6.9 | 7.5 |
| Thailand | 4.8 | 15 |
| Vietnam | 0.8 | 2.8 |
* Source: Global Youth Tobacco Survey 2019
In Thailand, a 12-year old girl is fighting for her life in intensive care in a hospital as her lungs are severely damaged due to vaping. Although Thailand has banned electronic smoking devices, some harm reductions front groups have been pressurizing the government to revoke the ban.
In Malaysia, a 16-year-old girl, who had been vaping for 3 years, died in June 2023 from acute heart failure with pulmonary embolism in a probable EVALI case. In a separate case, a 2-year old child suffered nicotine poisoning and now has neurological problems.
News of more and more underaged girls vaping are being reported across the globe.
But there is hope as young women from around the globe are taking matters into their own hands and demanding policy makers take decisive action and protect them from the tobacco industry and its harmful products.
Figure 2: Young women from Global Youth Voices at WHO FCTC COP10 in Panama, February 2024
Young women from Global Youth Voices made their presence felt in Panama, February 2024 at the WHO FCTC COP10
What can be done to accelerate action to protect women and girls from the tobacco industry:
- Phase out tobacco products, ban electronic smoking devices.
- Hold the tobacco industry liable for the harm it causes to women and children
- Charge the tobacco and nicotine industry a levy paid to government to be used to end child labor in tobacco production and smoking and vaping among children.
Wishing more strength and support to women and girls on this International Women’s Day!
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