Special communication. At the launch of Tobacco Control in 1992, the concept of a global treaty to address the growing tobacco epidemic could have seemed farfetched but for the efforts of the late Professor Ruth Roemer who, in 1993, was encouraging tobacco control advocates to consider international treaty law to address the global needs of tobacco control.1 The rest, as it’s said, is history. In 2021, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) completed 16 years since its entry into force and the 9th Conference of the Parties of the FCTC took place in November 2021. As we enter 2022, the treaty and the journal’s history remain fundamentally connected...