Dr. Geoffrey Fong discusses the limited success of tobacco control policies in China and the Netherlands in a forthcoming issue of International Innovation. The article discusses the powerful influence of the tobacco industry which has led to weak policies in both countries.

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.