[Correspondence] The UK must help end the global tobacco epidemic fuelled by British firms

Although smoking rates have declined in high-income countries over the past two decades, smoking remains the leading modifiable risk factor for mortality globally. More than 80% of current smokers now live in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), where the burden of tobacco-related illness and death is now heaviest.1 British transnational tobacco companies, supported by UK trade policy, played a major role in igniting the tobacco epidemic in the 20th century, and continue to fuel the epidemic in the 21st century, particularly in Commonwealth countries.