All of the Sri Lankan groups engage the populace through public debate and public action, using provocative and informative messages and counter-marketing to undermine the effect of tobacco industry promotions. Counter-marketing tactics include organizing demonstrations and creating communication materials that protest the tobacco industry’s marketing and promotion activities. These materials are typically low-tech, involving considerable amounts of paint, paper, and glue. Painted slogans are regularly supplemented with street performances, marches and protests, and megaphone-amplified slogans, dramas, and songs. These community groups use poignant humor to get messages across and undermine the power of the industry’s targeted marketing. Communication materials ascribe blame to the industry rather than to individual smokers. The proliferation of such community organizations, and commitment of these organizations to tobacco control, cannot be imposed from above. Enactment of treaty provisions at the local level requires harnessing existing networks of indigenous organizations and fostering local appreciation of the stakes communities have in tobacco control, as has occurred, for example, throughout Sri Lanka.

History suggests there will be frequent breaches by the industry that will need to be exposed, particularly in the areas of advertising and promotion. To take the example of Mauritius, British-American Tobacco has established partnerships with certain restaurant chains and paints the outside walls of the sponsored restaurants with colors of their cigarette brands. This not only serves to circumvent existing and future advertising bans but also creates local allies for their fight to keep smoking legal in restaurants and bars. In the small number of countries with strong labeling provisions, such as Canada and Brazil, the industry is challenging graphic health warnings as infringement on trademark rights. The industry is fighting in all countries to reserve public areas for smoking through their courtesy of choice campaigns.

In many cases, the industry is targeting its efforts not at national governments but at local business owners and communities. Community organizations can play an important role in tracking and exposing these industry activities. They can also address individual-level factors by improving knowledge of risks to the smoker and individuals exposed to tobacco smoke. In doing so they may redefine the boundaries of what smoking behavior, if any, is acceptable in particular environments. They can provide individuals with the motivation and skills to call into question behavior that breaches these parameters and those written into law—whether the transgressor is a merchant, a newspaper, a government official, or the tobacco industry. In countries where tobacco company practices have been exposed and the public has voiced concerns and taken action through community organizations, cultural perceptions of tobacco have changed significantly. This approach can ultimately undermine the unduly positive image of brands and tobacco companies. Most important, community organizations can help ensure there is broad popular support for tobacco control interventions and that tobacco control initiatives are owned by all citizens, not just the concerned few.

There is a perception that the communities who suffer the most from economic globalization are the least able to make change. Indeed, until recently, the power-base of transnational tobacco companies has been in the global economy, where local and national organizations have little access or purview. However, improved communication, information sharing, local action, and multilateral cooperation greatly increase the prospects for poor communities to make their voice heard. The FCTC is proof. The effectiveness of global regulatory mechanisms remains to be seen: community organizations are the catalysts that can help ensure the public health merits of the FCTC are ultimately fulfilled.