TAKE ACTION TO REDUCE TOBACCO USE
Everyone deserves the chance to live a longer, healthier life.
Tobacco and nicotine products get in the way of that future because they harm nearly every organ of the body, including your heart and brain, and because policies and environments still make these products too easy to access, especially for young people.
When harmful tobacco products – including traditional cigarettes, e-cigarettes or vapes, and oral nicotine pouches – are widely available, heavily marketed or made more appealing with flavors, more people start using them, and more families face preventable disease and loss. This helps explain why tobacco remains a leading cause of preventable death in our country.
What is tobacco control policy?
Tobacco control policy includes laws and programs that reduce tobacco and nicotine use, prevent addiction and protect people from secondhand smoke and aerosol. These policies share the environment where people live, learn, work and play, making it easier to stay tobacco-free.
How tobacco and nicotine policies protect health
The problem isn’t just about individual choice — it’s the conditions surrounding those choices. Communities need stronger protections to reduce exposure, prevent addiction and support people who want to quit.
Across the country, PROVEN policy solutions are protecting health and saving lives:
- Smoke-free laws to reduce harmful exposure
- Higher tobacco prices to prevent youth addiction
- Quit programs to help people succeed
- Flavor elimination to stop products from hooking kids
- Tobacco retail licensing to ensure tobacco retailers follow the laws
These changes don’t happen on their own – they happen when people speak up.
Heart Powered is the American Heart Association’s national grassroots network, built on more than 40 years of advocacy to advance evidence-based policies, protect communities and change the future of health.
Join Heart Powered and take action on tobacco policy today.
Be part of the movement driving policy change for longer, healthier lives.
When you take action, decision makers listen.
Your voice can help create healthier environments, protect children from tobacco products and nicotine addiction, help people quit and support families across your state.
- Sign the pledge for a tobacco-free future
- Contact your lawmakers on key policies
- Share your story to move decisionmakers
- Stay informed and take action when it matters most
Ways you can get involved
It Starts with Action
Join us today—sign up to get action alerts and opportunities to advocate for Tobacco Control policies.
Sign the Pledge
Tobacco Control Policies
5 Ways We Can Reduce Tobacco Use and Protect Health.
Every person deserves the chance to live a longer, healthier life. But tobacco and nicotine products get in the way because they harm nearly every organ of the body – including your heart and brain – and because current tobacco policies and the environments around us still make these products too easy to access and use.
Take Me to the Blog
Tobacco Use and Nicotine Policy
Your story has the power to create change.
Stories help make that connection. When you share what you’ve seen, felt and experienced, you help others understand how tobacco and nicotine impact lives and why stronger tobacco policies are needed now.
Share Your StoryAdvocate Stories
Peg O’Connell has spent more than three decades as an American Heart Association grassroots advocate in the Carolinas.
An attorney by training, O’Connell began her advocacy work in South Carolina, helping transform a state once ranked worst in the nation for cardiovascular disease, specifically stroke. She joined the “From Worst to First” campaign to improve stroke outcomes and help older Carolinians live longer, healthier lives. Already working on Medicare quality improvement, the alliance felt like a natural fit.
Read Peg's Story
Great grandma, grassroots advocate, offers retirement challenge to seniors.
Bea Cardenas-Duncan, 78, is a double retiree who believes seniors are a “forgotten community” with untapped influence to improve health and wellness. Affectionately known as “Miss Bea,” her challenge for fellow seniors wanting to get involved can be summed up in one sentence: Leave a legacy.
Read Bea's Story