Cliff Douglas is an attorney, consultant, and public health policy expert who has been involved with tobacco and nicotine issues since leading the national effort to make commercial airline flights smokefree on behalf of the Coalition on Smoking or Health, comprised of the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and American Lung Association. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where he has taught courses in tobacco control and policy and directed the Tobacco Research Network. In 2023, on behalf of the University of Michigan Center for the Assessment of Tobacco regulations, he produced the widely used online course, Tobacco & Nicotine: Public Health, Science, Policy, and Law (https://www.coursera.org/learn/tobacco-and-nicotine-public-health-science-policy-law).
He served previously as President and Chief Executive Officer of Global Action to End Smoking, as the American Cancer Society’s National Vice President for Tobacco Control, as Tobacco Control Policy Advisor for the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health and the U.S. Surgeon General during the Obama administration, and as Special Counsel on Tobacco Issues for Rep. Martin T. Meehan and the Congressional Task Force on Tobacco and Health. He also served on the legal team for state attorneys general in the litigation that resulted in the Master Settlement Agreement and in other successful landmark lawsuits on behalf of people who had suffered injury and death from smoking. Since 2015, he has dedicated himself to the cause of tobacco harm reduction, educating the public, health professionals, industry, and policy-makers about the continuum of risk of tobacco and nicotine products, and public health-informed regulation of those products.
He earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan, and also studied at Columbia University, Harvard University, and Exeter University in the United Kingdom.‍