What the assault on the US Centers for Disease Controls Office on Smoking and Health means for the USA and Global Public Health

On 1 April 2025, the Office on Smoking and Health (OSH), a division in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was shuttered. Some 200 staff and contractors discovered via a middle of the night email that they were terminated without notice.1 OSH’s dismantling has continued, including withholding of funding appropriated by Congress to support state tobacco programmes for half a year and ending the astonishingly successful 14-year Tips From Former Smokers national media campaign. Surveillance systems that inform our understanding of tobacco use and cessation trends have been degraded.2 3 These developments, combined with cutbacks in related US federal programmes and discontinuation of US funding for the WHO—long a thorn in the side of the tobacco industry—place coordinated tobacco prevention efforts and progress in reducing tobacco harms in the USA at risk. Unless reversed, they may also potentially impact global tobacco…

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