What a Coincidence: Successful CDC Anti-Smoking Campaign Shuttered Amid Heavy Trump Investment In a Tobacco Giant
Washington D.C. – Donald Trump and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claim that fighting chronic disease tops their “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, but their actions have done nothing but incentivize the industry behind the single leading cause of preventable death in America – tobacco — which kills nearly a half million Americans every year.
This week, the New York Times detailed how one of the CDC’s greatest public health success stories has been shelved for over year as big tobacco money funneled into Donald Trump’s political orbit: “The [CDC’s] 14-year ad campaign, called Tips From Former Smokers, was highly memorable and, research shows, highly effective in motivating people to quit. Last year, though, as tobacco companies gave millions to political organizations related to the Trump administration, the campaign went dark.”
Now a new analysis, ‘Up In Smoke’, from Protect Our Care spotlights how the administration’s corrupt retreat from warning Americans about the extreme risks of smoking is part of a troubling pattern of Trump and RFK Jr. selling out public health to big tobacco for Trump’s own benefit, from: shutting down the federal government’s smoking-cessation programs, firing the officials who enforce tobacco laws, fast-tracking addictive flavored nicotine products that prey on teens and kids, and installing tobacco insiders inside federal health agencies. All the while, Trump “grew his stock holdings this year to as much as $1.64 million in tobacco giant Philip Morris”, with additional holdings in Altria, and made eight separate purchases of Philip Morris or Altria stock in March 2026 alone worth up to $275,000. In 2025 alone, “tobacco interests donated $6 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supports the president, and Trump’s inauguration”.
“This is the most aggressively pro-tobacco administration since the 1950s when they didn’t know it was the #1 cause of preventable death. What’s different now is a White House that wears corruption on its sleeve and is even happy to risk kids’ lives for the right price,” said Brad Woodhouse, President of Protect Our Care. “You don’t have to follow the money far to see Donald Trump stands to get richer the more America’s youth lights up cancer sticks after getting sucked in with addictive flavored nicotine products. Among the many ways Trump has abused his power to enrich himself and industry megadonors that traffic in poison and pollution, the complete surrender of public health to big tobacco is the most toxic of all.”
Protect Our Care’s new analysis highlights the Trump FDA’s recent move to “allow Zyn nicotine pouches to be marketed as less harmful to human health than cigarettes” — despite expert warnings it sets up young Americans for a lifetime of nicotine addiction and potential heart problems – as well as the administration’s dangerous effort to fast-track poisonous flavored vapes into the hands of kids. In May, Health Secretary RFK Jr. dutifully followed Donald Trump’s order to push FDA Commissioner Marty Makary out the door for not moving ‘quickly enough’ to approve addictive and harmfulflavored vapes and nicotine products that appeal to American teens and kids after big tobacco interests cut a $5 million check to a Trump SuperPAC and after a fancy golf course luncheon between Trump and big tobacco and vape lobbyists.
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