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HEALTH: Tobacco Treaty – a Groundbreaking Global Victory

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Feb 26 2005 (IPS) - The first global public health treaty ever adopted – the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) – will enter into force this Sunday, after being ratified by 57 countries.

The first global public health treaty ever adopted – the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) – will enter into force this Sunday, after being ratified by 57 countries.

The treaty, initiated by the World Health Organisation (WHO), establishes a ban on tobacco company advertising, sponsorship and promotion, as well as international standards on labelling, pricing, taxes, contraband and second-hand smoke, among other questions.

Tobacco is the second leading cause of death around the world, claiming close to five million lives a year. According to estimates, it will prematurely kill ten million people a year by 2020 if current trends continue.

When the FCTC enters into force on Sunday, its provisions will be legally binding for the 40 countries that ratified the treaty before Nov. 30, 2004.

For the seventeen additional countries that have become parties to the treaty since that date, and any others that join from now on, it will become legally binding 90 days after ratification.

"This treaty will save millions of lives," said Kathryn Mulvey, a U.S. activist who travelled to Geneva to participate in the WHO events celebrating the FCTC’s entry into force. "It demonstrates that working together, the nations of the world can protect people from irresponsible and dangerous corporate practices."

Mulvey is the executive director of Corporate Accountability International, formerly known as Infact, a non-governmental watchdog organisation based in Boston, Massachusetts that wages campaigns against harmful private enterprise actions around the world.

In an interview with IPS, Mulvey highlighted the fact that February has become a landmark month for international cooperation on issues crucial to the protection of the world’s population, with the entry into force of both the FCTC and the Kyoto Protocol (on Feb. 16), aimed at curbing emissions of the "greenhouse gases" that lead to global warming.

IPS: Is this a cause for celebration for everyone?

Kathryn Mulvey: As somebody from the U.S., I’m ashamed to see for the second time in the month that the U.S. is on the sidelines as a major international agreement takes effect.

IPS: But haven’t there been hints of some possible changes in these policies in recent days?

KM: Certainly. While President (George W.) Bush is going around Europe this week to try and mend relations, it gives the lie to the posture that’s being put forth, because when it comes to humanitarian and environmental agreements, the US does not participate.

IPS: So is this an irremediable situation?

KM: I think that the situation is a little different in that with the FCTC, if the 191 other countries of the WHO implement its provisions, it will have a huge impact. We don’t have good legislation in the U.S., but at least there’s a public climate that doesn’t tolerate certain kinds of abuses.

IPS: What will be the first signs of the FCTC’s entry into force?

KM: Some of the most visible signs will be in terms of advertising, promotion, and sponsorship of tobacco products in countries that have ratified the treaty and are implementing comprehensive bans. Images like the Marlboro Man will disappear from billboards, and people won’t be wearing tobacco company baseball caps and T-shirts. I think we will really notice a major difference there, as well as with the labelling and packaging of tobacco products, with much more graphic warning labels.

IPS: And in the medium term?

KM: In the medium term, we could see a reversal of the epidemic. I think that some of the immediate impacts would be on the number of kids who become addicted to tobacco, because really that’s been the industry’s master working strategy, to reach young people, to appeal to the adolescent psyche.

One of the main ways that they have done that is through advertising. Once we change, once we clamp down and don’t let the tobacco corporations promote addictive and deadly products in the way that they have, we’re not going to see as many kids getting hooked.

IPS: When will we begin to see a decrease in tobacco-related morbidity and mortality rates?

KM: I’m not an expert in the epidemiology of it, but it’s going to take time to reverse this epidemic, because people get sick and die 20, 30, 40 years down the road from when they start. If you speak to people who have lost a loved one through a tobacco-related illness, they say they started when they were 14 or 15 years old.

So what we’ll be doing basically is turning off the tap, and especially in developing countries, where the epidemic hasn’t taken hold as firmly as in Europe and in the U.S. Even where there are relatively high smoking rates in some countries, the amount of tobacco consumed isn’t as high.

IPS: What policies would you recommend for developing countries?

KM: Before the transnationals get in there and increase both the range and amount of consumption in developing countries, we can actually avoid some of the issues and problems that the Northern countries went through in the last 50 to 100 years. That’s really exciting. That’s why we saw Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East lead the way in the negotiations: because people benefit.

IPS: Are there differences between state-owned and private tobacco companies?

KM: Our experience is that transnationals are much more aggressive in the way that they have gone about promoting the products, and in tactics to try to pry open markets. They’ve used trade leverage, they’ve used powerful governments like the U.S.

There are issues around the state having an interest in the tobacco industry. If it’s really operating within one nation’s borders, you don’t have the same imperative to grow and to expand markets that you do when it’s a transnational.

That’s the dangerous position of Japan. Although it has ratified the Convention, it remains a majority stakeholder in Japan Tobacco International (JTI), their largest transnational. The big three are Philip Morris/Altria, British American Tobacco and JTI.

IPS: And the state-owned companies?

The biggest are probably the China National Tobacco Corporation and ITC of India. What we saw was that East Asia was the real laboratory for this. In many cases there were state monopolies, and the U.S. government used the threat of trade sanctions in the 1980s and early 1990s to pry open foreign markets. And we saw increases in the youth smoking rates, especially in women. In many of those countries, women didn’t smoke at all or at very low rates. We saw really dramatic increases.