Colonial Harm in New Packaging: Indigenous Critiques of the Tobacco Industry's ‘Harm Reduction’ Rhetoric

Abstract

Over the last 75 years, we have learned that commercial tobacco use causes widespread disease and death. However, the commercial Tobacco and Nicotine Industry continues to promote, market, and sell tobacco and nicotine products to protect and expand profit. This reflects their legal obligation to act in shareholders’ best interests. While the Tobacco and Nicotine Industry heavily promotes alternative products such as electronic cigarettes and nicotine pouches, for now, these represent a relatively small share of profits compared with combustible cigarette sales. The continued reliance on and expansion of these markets generates addiction, dependence, and a range of harms. These actions represent a modern manifestation of colonization—reproducing control and exploitation that affects people at all levels, particularly Indigenous peoples, whose lands, knowledges, and well-being have long been commodified and targeted. The Tobacco and Nicotine Industry and their collaborators employ misleading strategies, including co-opting terms like ‘harm reduction’ and making vague promises about a ‘smoke-free’ or ‘noncombustible’ future. These tactics distract from the continued promotion and sale of harmful products under the guise of public health and harm reduction. This narrative reframes structural and commercial determinants of health as matters of individual choice and enables the continued production of Tobacco and Nicotine Industry–driven harms. Everyone has the right to health, and it is crucial to have effective tobacco control and resistance programs and policies. Governments have a duty to protect people's health by preventing the creation of new generations addicted to people-harming products. Given the ongoing and disproportionate impact of tobacco and nicotine-related disease and death—particularly for Indigenous peoples—there is an urgent need for structural change to eradicate these harms and dismantle colonial and commercial systems that sustain them.