How a tax became a turning point
Six years of tobacco-control advocacy, and what it takes to move a number that costs 450 lives a day.
When Chromatic began its work on tobacco control, Pakistan was losing an estimated 450 people a day to tobacco-related illness, and the policy tools to change that were stalled.
Over six years, our campaign helped move a 153% increase in the federal tobacco tax, saw the elimination of the “third-tier” tax category that had let cheaper products slip through, and supported provincial bans on tobacco and emerging nicotine products in educational institutions. We became the only civil-society organization to engage a sitting Prime Minister directly on the issue.
The lesson we carry forward: durable public-health change is won in the space where communication, evidence, and policy meet, not in any one of them alone.