Since the beginning of the 20th century, tobacco companies have been developing all kinds of activities to promote tobacco use, actively hiding the accumulating scientific evidence of the damage that both active smoking and involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke cause to individual and collective health. In order to continue to ensure their economic profit at the expense of the suffering of millions of human beings - tobacco is estimated to cause 8 million premature deaths worldwide every year - the multinational tobacco companies did not hesitate to hide the data demonstrating both the addictive capacity of nicotine and the link between cigarette use and numerous diseases. While continuing to oppose any policy measures to prevent and control smoking, tobacco companies have had no qualms about launching new products on the market that promise to protect against the harm they themselves cause, from cigarette filters to the latest heated tobacco products and e-cigarettes to light products. Nor have they hesitated to recruit researchers and take control of companies in the health sector to launder their activities and disseminate biased information. 

Although the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, promoted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), urges states to protect health policies from tobacco industry interference, action is still needed to ensure that the economic interests of tobacco companies do not undermine scientific and public health progress. The WHO's chosen theme for World No Tobacco Day 2024 again refers to the need to protect children from industry interference. 

The research just published by the BMJ shows that, although some scientific journals have adopted measures to prevent the publication of biased - or simply false - results due to conflicts of interest with the tobacco industry, only a few of them expressly prohibit the publication of studies funded by tobacco companies and it is not exceptional that even in these journals papers are published in which conflicts of interest derived from funding by companies linked to multinational tobacco companies are declared. The commitment to strengthen the firewalls between the tobacco industry and the content published by the editors of the BMJ group of journals is certainly a step in the right direction.