On Monday 28 May 2018, the French Solidarities and Health Minister Agnès Buzyn reconfirmed the Government's strong commitment to tackling the tobacco pandemic at national level.

During a press conference organised for World No Tobacco Day, she declared that tobacco control is everyone's responsibility as the harm affects everyone. After describing the existing measures, including standardized packaging and increase in taxation, she then presented the four objectives of the new national tobacco control programme, which will be launched in the coming days:

Every year 30 billion cigarette butts are estimated to be disposed in France, with 40% of them ending up on beaches, in forests, rivers and seashores. Moreover, evidence shows that a single filter can contaminate hundreds of liters of clean water due to the chemicals it contains and could take more than 10 years to decompose. In the same token, the French capital picks up around 350 tons of cigarettes butts each year despite the provision of public ashtrays and the threat of a 68 euros fine for anyone who litter on the street.

In a landmark case, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka ordered the Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC) to pay Lalitha Padmini Fernando a sum of R.s. 400,000 to compensate her for the death of her husband. The Supreme Court found CTC had prolonged this case for more than 12 years because the company continuously filed petitions in the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. In September 1996, K.S. Perera, a tailor who began smoking tobacco as a teenager, was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer.

On 11 April 2018, the Government of the Republic of the Congo adopted three decrees to operationalize implementation of the tobacco control act of 2012. The new decrees will help protecting Congolese citizens from the harmful effects of tobacco use and preventing young people and children from starting smoking.

During the session of the Council of Ministers, Minister of Health Jacqueline Lydia Mikolo presented the decrees, that cover: