A letter in The Lancet titled "Can the Dutch Government really be abandoning smokers to their fate?" provides commentary on the deplorable situation in The Netherlands. The Health Minister, Edith Schippers, is destroying the infrastructure for tobacco control as she also weakens the already-weak smoke-free laws, eliminates mass media, and is attempting to stop govt reimbursement for stop smoking medication.

According to Dr. Geoffrey Fong, the most difficult aspect of knowledge translation (KT) is just convincing people to pay attention to research findings. But since he started the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC), Dr. Fong hasn't just captured policy makers' attention – his evaluation findings have been helping set the global agenda on tobacco regulation.

A Dutch documentary entitled “Minister of Tobacco” describes the strong links between the Dutch Minister of Health, Edith Schippers, and the tobacco industry, in apparent violation of Article 5.3 of the FCTC.

Waterpipe or hookah smoking is a popular phenomenon not only in Middle Eastern and South Asian countries, but also among young people in the U.S. Hookah practices have seen a major resurgence in recent years after introduction of the sweet and flavorful “shisha” that is smoked through the waterpipe. There is relatively little research in the scientific literature addressing waterpipe usage and health effects.