- Person
- Michael Bloomberg
- Lived
- b. 1942
- Field
- Financial data & media
- From
- American
The story
Michael Bloomberg, the founder of the financial data company Bloomberg L.P., was elected mayor of New York City in 2001 and served three terms. He accepted a salary of one dollar a year and made public health one of the central themes of his time in office.
His most famous health measure was the Smoke-Free Air Act. It took effect in March 2003 and banned smoking in virtually all indoor workplaces, including bars and restaurants, protecting workers and customers from secondhand smoke. Critics predicted the end of the city's hospitality and tourism industries. Instead, by the law's tenth anniversary in 2013, the city had about 6,000 more bars and restaurants than before it took effect.
The ban proved successful, and many other cities and states followed New York's example. The city later extended it to areas around hospital entrances in 2009 and to parks and beaches in 2011. Bloomberg's administration also raised the city's cigarette tax and increased the legal age to buy tobacco products, and New York later banned flavoured tobacco and e-cigarette products, including menthol flavours. In 2013 Bloomberg said there were about 500,000 fewer smokers in the city than a decade earlier, and about 10,000 fewer deaths linked to smoking. The city's health commissioner said the law had made smoking socially unacceptable.
Bloomberg went further on diet. On December 5, 2006, New York became the first city in the United States to ban artificial trans fats from all restaurants, a rule that took effect in 2008 and was later adopted by many other cities and countries. He also required chain restaurants to post calorie counts, created bicycle lanes and turned much of Times Square into a pedestrian plaza. Some critics called the measures a nanny state, but public health advocates supported them.
Later in his career he extended his anti-smoking campaign worldwide through his foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has invested more than a billion dollars in tobacco control in low- and middle-income countries.
Why it matters
New York's smoke-free law and trans fat ban became models that other cities and states copied, protecting the health of millions of people.
About Michael Bloomberg
Fired from Wall Street in 1981, he built the Bloomberg Terminal and a global news empire, then served three terms as New York’s mayor and became one of the world’s largest philanthropists.
More about Michael Bloomberg
- Michael Bloomberg's plan created 160,000 affordable homesAs mayor, Michael Bloomberg increased funding for affordable housing through a plan that created and preserved an estimated 160,000 affordable homes in New York.
- Michael Bloomberg helps mayors govern betterThrough the Mayors Challenge and the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, Michael Bloomberg has rewarded city innovation and trained hundreds of mayors.
- Michael Bloomberg helped protect children from drowningSince 2012 Bloomberg Philanthropies has funded drowning prevention in Bangladesh through childcare and swimming lessons; child drowning deaths fell by 80%.
- Michael Bloomberg helped close coal plants across AmericaIn 2011 Michael Bloomberg gave 50 million dollars to the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, expanding its push to replace coal-fired power plants with clean energy.
- Michael Bloomberg backed America's Black medical schoolsMichael Bloomberg gave 100 million dollars in 2020 and 600 million dollars in 2024 to America's four historically Black medical schools.
- Michael Bloomberg made Johns Hopkins medical school freeIn 2024 Michael Bloomberg gave 1 billion dollars so that medical school at Johns Hopkins would be tuition-free for students from families earning under 300,000 dollars.
- Bloomberg gave over a billion dollars to fight tobaccoMichael Bloomberg’s foundation has committed more than $1.6 billion since 2007 to reduce tobacco use, making it the developing world’s biggest funder of tobacco control.
- Michael Bloomberg funds safer roads and polio eradicationBloomberg Philanthropies has committed $865 million to global road safety since 2007, partnering with the WHO from 2009, and has given $200 million to help eradicate polio.
Michael Bloomberg in the news
- September 24, 2026Bloomberg Philanthropies expands free school eye care to seven more US cities
- August 19, 2026Michael Bloomberg gives $155 million for a public science hall in Boston
- June 22, 2026Bloomberg commits about $590 million to oceans, clean energy and cleaner city air
- April 28, 2026Bloomberg pledges $350 million more to cut road deaths in 13 countries
- March 10, 2026Michael Bloomberg tops the Philanthropy 50 for a third year with $4.3 billion in gifts
- February 24, 2026Bloomberg Philanthropies awards $1 million each to 24 cities in Mayors Challenge
Sources
- Michael Bloomberg Wikipedia
- NYC Marks 10th Anniversary Of Anti-Smoking Initiative CBS New York
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.