In our Opinion section, voices from the moral ambition movement share bold perspectives and urgent calls to action on the world’s most pressing challenges.

‍When corporations knowingly profit from products that kill millions, why do we let them off the hook?

Governments spend billions on healthcare and millions more subsidising policy campaigns to fight industries that thrive on harm, trying to protect us from tobacco, ultra-processed food, alcohol and fossil fuels to name a few. Yet year after year, these industries continue to expand, exploit, and interfere with regulation. They privatize profits while socializing costs. The result: fragile health systems, sick populations, and taxpayers footing the bill for preventable disease.

But here’s the thing: we already have the laws to stop them. What we lack is the will, and the funding, to enforce those laws through the courts.

That’s why we launched SHIFT, a catalyst funder for strategic litigation against health-harming corporations. Our aim is straightforward: enforce existing legislation, hold corporations accountable, and stop industries of harm from thriving. Litigation, after all, doesn’t persuade — it compels.

Policy Is Not Enough

The global public health field often turns to policy reform. However, policies are fragile. They can be watered down, delayed, or quietly buried under the weight of corporate lobbying. The tobacco industry pioneered this playbook: deceptive advertising, funding front groups, suppressing scientific evidence, targeting developing nations, and interfering in public health regulations at every turn.

Other industries watched closely. Today, producers of junk food, alcohol, and fossil fuels deploy the same tactics — with the same devastating effects.

Policy can push back. But litigation forces accountability. It shifts the cost of harm back to those who knowingly cause it.
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Why Start With Tobacco?

We believe the fight begins with tobacco because it’s the model for every other harmful industry. It is the deadliest consumer product in history, killing more than 7 million people each year. It is also the most regulated, thanks to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world’s only health-specific treaty.

That treaty, and the precedents already set in tobacco control, give us a unique opportunity. If we can enforce existing laws against tobacco companies, we can create a “halo effect” — precedents that ripple across industries, forcing others to meet higher standards of corporate accountability.

A Proven Strategy

Strategic litigation is not abstract. It has worked before.

Consider Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), founded in 1980 by Candace Lightner after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver. What began at a kitchen table grew into one of the most powerful grassroots organizations in the United States. By using both advocacy and litigation, MADD helped change laws, reshape cultural norms, and cut alcohol-related traffic deaths by more than half. An estimated 400,000 lives have been saved.

The lesson is clear: small cases can trigger systemic change.

At SHIFT, we fund — on a non-profit basis — civil and administrative cases that would not typically be funded. We provide in-house legal expertise to assess criteria, build coalitions with advocacy groups and academics, and support communications strategies that ensure legal victories translate into cultural change.

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The Common Playbook of Harm

In our work we’ve seen a striking commonality across harmful industries. Whether it’s tobacco, soda, alcohol, or fossil fuels, the tactics are the same:

• Breach of advertising standards through deceptive claims and targeting vulnerable populations.
  
• Corporate interference in public health policy, from lobbying to disinformation campaigns.
  
• Exploiting regulatory gaps and loopholes to keep harmful products on the market.
  
• Normalizing harmful products through relentless marketing.
  
• Suppressing science that shows the dangers of their goods.
  
• Targeting developing nations with weaker regulatory systems.
  

Recognizing this pattern is crucial. It means that lessons learned from fighting one industry can be applied to others. The tools are there. The laws exist. We simply need to use them.
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The Cost of Inaction

This is not a distant problem. It is costing lives and public budgets today. Each year, tobacco alone drains more than $1 trillion in health care costs and lost productivity worldwide. Add the burden of obesity, alcohol-related disease, and fossil fuel-driven air pollution, and the numbers are staggering.

Governments cannot afford to keep writing blank checks for preventable harm. Litigation changes the equation. It says: if you profit from harming health, you pay for it.

We are convinced that good health is a human right, and that the law can be one of our strongest tools to protect it. But litigation requires resources, persistence, and the courage to stand up to some of the wealthiest corporations on earth.

That’s where catalyst funding comes in. SHIFT exists to spark cases that would not otherwise be brought, to connect advocates and legal experts across borders, and to ensure that victories in one jurisdiction inspire action in another.

We are not naïve. Industries of harm will continue to resist. But the history of public health shows that when the law catches up to corporate misconduct, change follows. Seat belt laws, smoking bans, drink-driving restrictions: all once seemed radical, all are now common sense. The same can be true for holding corporations legally accountable for the products they sell.

The future we imagine is one where it is no longer profitable to make people sick. Where corporations are held to the same standard as citizens: obey the law, or face the consequences. Where public health policies are not undermined but enforced, through the courts if necessary.

The law is already on our side. It’s time we used it.
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Steven Baylis and Amina Ahmad are co-founders of SHIFT and alumni of the Tobacco Free Future Fellowship. For more information and ways to get involved, go to their website. Have a case? Want to fund the movement? Contact SHIFT and let them know.