Thursday, June 11, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
HEALTH: Crucial Talks for Global Tobacco Control
Gustavo Capdevila
- Inter-governmental negotiations for an international convention on tobacco control are to be renewed next week amidst pressures from the health community and from civil society organisations that demand vigorous action to protect global public health from the threat they say is created by big tobacco transnationals.
Delegates from the 192 member states of the World Health Organisation (WHO) are gathering Oct 14-25 in this Swiss city to discuss the draft of a tobacco control convention presented in July by the chairman of the its Inter-governmental Negotiating Body (INB), Brazilian diplomat Luis Felipe de Seixas Correa.
The initiative, which came under fire from the handful of corporations that dominate the world’s tobacco industry and was criticised by tobacco farmers in some countries, seeks to develop global rules "to curb the advertising, promotion and sales and smuggling of tobacco products."
But some non-governmental organisations like the Network for the Accountability of Tobacco Transnationals (NATT) have charged that the Seixas Correa draft of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) does not go far enough.
NATT, based in the U.S. city of Boston and serving as an umbrella for more than 70 anti-tobacco NGOs from some 50 countries, demanded stricter wording of the draft before the vote on its approval, which is slated to take place in May 2003 at the next World Health Assembly.
"This is a critical moment for the negotiations," said WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland, adding that "the technical work is complete and I believe the time has come for countries to show their determination about curbing the tobacco epidemic."
Consumption of tobacco products, particularly cigarettes, is blamed for the deaths of 4.9 million people around the world each year. Brundtland stressed that a strong tobacco control convention will save lives.
"Delays mean more deaths, and more children falling prey to tobacco," she added.
Based on today’s rate of tobacco consumption, the projected annual figure for related deaths is 10 million by the late 2020s. However, WHO executive director for of non-communicable diseases and mental health, Derek Yach, commented that this is "somewhat of an underestimate".
Trends in tobacco-related death rates are based on consumption patterns 10 to 20 years ago. Two variables that really need to be considered are youth smoking rates and "quit-rates" among adults, explained Yach.
In China, where 320 million people smoke and one million people die each year as a result of tobacco consumption, the portion of adults who give up the smoking habit is far smaller than in Europe and Latin America.
The WHO official noted that any changes in the smoking rate in China – home to nearly 1.3 billion people – would have an impact on the global figures on tobacco use.
The Chinese government is "steadily moving in the right direction" by launching various programmes, such as smoke-free schools.
The 2008 Olympics, to take place in Beijing, will also be "a showcase for tobacco-free sport," according to the Chinese government, said Yach.
Gradually, major sports are deploying campaigns against tobacco use. Professional football and volleyball are among the pioneers in such efforts, while Formula One auto-racing will ban tobacco and cigarette advertising beginning in 2006.
It is precisely this issue that riles the NGOs of NATT about the draft convention. They say the treaty should include a total ban on advertising, promotion and sponsorship by big tobacco companies.
NATT has also expressed concern about the text’s failure to explicitly make public health a priority over international trade, and that this could make the FCTC subordinate to World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements.
Negotiators from WHO member states will meet in Geneva for two weeks of talks on international rules to limit advertising, promotion and sales as well as smuggling of tobacco products and related issues.
As far as the success of advertising bans, Yach cited the cases of Brazil and South Africa, where smoking rates have diminished following the implementation of advertising restrictions.
In this sense, he said, the negotiations related to the treaty have begun to bear fruit even before it has been implemented: "The process of the framework convention has been almost as important as its own outcome."
Many countries are strengthening their own legislative responses to the tobacco consumption problem, they are revising their tax systems, and taking actions at the community level like never before, said the WHO official.
Examples of this include new laws introduced in the German parliament to restrict smoking in the workplace, similar legislation in Pakistan and India, while the government of Malaysia is slated to enact an advertising ban on tobacco products as of January 2003.
But big tobacco companies are gradually shifting their focus to the developing countries and previously closed markets in order to compensate for stagnant sales in former major markets like Europe and the United States, noted Yach.
The recent entry of China into the WTO system meant that Beijing had to adapt its legislation to the market liberalising rules of the multilateral trade arena.
As a result, transnationals like British American Tobacco (BAT, the world’s second largest tobacco company) have already begun to open factories in China and, protected by WTO rules, could import the raw material at lower prices than are available on the national market, thus creating a threat to Chinese tobacco growers, Yach explained.
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HEALTH: Crucial Talks for Global Tobacco Control
Gustavo Capdevila
- Inter-governmental negotiations for an international convention on tobacco control are to be renewed next week amidst pressures from the health community and from civil society organisations that demand vigorous action to protect global public health from the threat they say is created by big tobacco transnationals.
(more…)
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