Plastic garbage is offloaded from a fishing boat on the east coast of China. Credit: UNEP/Justin Jin
 
At 22 pages, the current draft text contains 32 draft articles which will be discussed in fine detail, according to the UN. The text is designed to shape the future instrument and will serve as a starting point for negotiations. For 10 days from 5-14 August, delegations from 179 countries will pore over the text as they meet at UN Geneva, alongside more than 1,900 other participants from 618 observer organizations including scientists, environmentalists and industry representatives.

By Deborah Sy
GENEVA, Aug 12 2025 (IPS)

The future plastics treaty is being sold as potentially an environmental breakthrough. But in its current form during this week’s negotiations, it contains a dangerous flaw that must be addressed before the final text is agreed — or it could undercut the world’s most widely ratified health treaty, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), and hand the tobacco industry the tools to expand its market under the banner of environmental action.

The most littered plastic item on earth — the cigarette filter — is also the world’s most regulated consumer product, covered by its own global treaty, the WHO FCTC. This puts it center stage in both the plastics treaty and the tobacco treaty — a unique overlap that demands alignment between the two.

Yet the current plastics treaty text is peppered with alignment clauses for trade agreements, not health agreements. It also promotes Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), “safe” alternatives, and recycling — none of which are compatible with or permitted for tobacco.

The WHO has recommended immediately banning all types of cigarette filters outright (not just plastic ones), recognizing that no safe alternatives exist for these highly toxic components and that no scalable, safe recycling method is available.

In stark contrast, the current plastics treaty text’s ceiling calls only for a “phase-out” until 203x, leaving much space for continued production and marketing. The Conference of the Parties to the FCTC (COP) has also warned that tobacco EPR is a marketing ploy that entrenches industry interference.

Under FCTC Article 2.2, Parties must ensure that any subsequent treaties they enter into are compatible with the FCTC — a duty the plastics treaty must respect.

If these loopholes stay to create obstacles for tobacco control and open doors for tobacco industry interreference, the cost will be measured in lives. With 1.3 billion current tobacco users worldwide, even a 1% market increase driven by “eco-filter” marketing or tobacco industry greenwashing would mean at least 13 million additional smokers, ultimately leading to an estimated 6.5 million premature deaths based on tobacco’s established 50% lifetime mortality rate.

This is also a generational betrayal. On International Youth Day on Aug 12 2025, with the theme of empowering youth, building a resilient future, negotiators must ensure the treaty does not do the opposite. If the treaty shields trade but not health, it will leave young people more exposed to toxic plastics, predatory marketing, and lifelong addiction — all while granting the industry a green veneer.

The problem is fixable. The chair’s text currently gives trade agreements explicit, binding protection, while health treaties get only soft principles. Some point to certain health exemptions in trade agreements as a possible safeguard but it is problematic: It has saved public health measures before, like plain packaging, but only after years of costly disputes and delays — time the tobacco industry uses to keep selling and misleading.

Without a binding requirement to implement the plastics treaty “in a manner compatible with relevant international health agreements, such as the WHO FCTC,” the tobacco industry will ensure that trade rules would dominate legal interpretation. That would make it harder to defend filter bans from WTO challenges and could legitimize tobacco EPR — despite COP10 warnings these are marketing ploys that entrench industry interference.

The fix is simple: Give health protections the same binding legal status as trade protections. If the treaty can protect trade, it can protect life. Anything less is not a plastics treaty for the planet. It’s a treaty for markets — and in the case of tobacco, it could kill more people than it saves.

SIDE BAR

Toxic Truth: Why Cigarette Filters Are Not “Green”

Cigarette butts are the most littered plastic item on Earth — and among the most toxic. Around 100 hazardous chemicals, metals and compounds have been identified in cigarette butt waste, including:

• • Carcinogens – Arsenic, cadmium, lead, formaldehyde, benzo[a]pyrene.
• • Endocrine disruptors – DEHP and DBP, restricted under EU REACH.
• • Neurotoxins and aquatic poisons – Nicotine, acrolein, PAHs.

• Heavy metals – Cadmium and lead persist in soils and waterways.

These leach into water, poison marine life, and contaminate ecosystems. There is no safe or sustainable “eco-filter” — the same toxins will appear in any filter regardless of material composition — any claim otherwise is greenwashing. Due to the toxicity, these cannot be safely recycled at scale.

Modest estimates show that over 26B USD per year is lost in terms of marine ecosystem losses arising from tobacco’s plastics alone.

Why the “Domestic Measures” Clause Protects Nothing

The chair’s draft says:

“Nothing in this Convention prevents a Party from taking additional domestic measures… in accordance with that Party’s other obligations under applicable international law.”

Why it’s not enough:

1. FCTC limits – The WHO FCTC has no binding obligation to ban cigarette filters or tobacco EPR. These are in guidelines, so the tobacco industry can argue that they aren’t “rights or obligations” protected here.

2. Consistency trap – Measures must be “consistent with this Convention.” If the plastics treaty permits eco-filters or tobacco EPR, national measures would have to allow them too.

3. “Other obligations” + multiple mention of trade treaties ≠ health treaty obligations – In practice, this phrase will be read as trade law and other environment agreements first, since these are spelled out elsewhere in the text.

4. Domestic only – The clause applies only to national measures, potentially excluding global or coordinated bans.

The clause permits tobacco EPR and non-plastic but still toxic filters — which means it blocks neither and could legitimize harmful industry tactics the FCTC warns against.

In Geneva — where the plastics treaty is being negotiated — many delegates are seasoned negotiators with experience in the tobacco treaty and other multilateral deals. They know the tobacco industry is also here, using the talks to push “eco filters” (toxic non-plastic filters) and waste schemes for green marketing cover.

Those based in Geneva have the highest duty to close the health loophole, but every negotiator in the room shares the responsibility. Right now, they are ensuring trade rules get binding protection in the treaty. They should be doing the same for health. Instead, health is left as a weak, non-binding principle — a loophole the industry can exploit. If it stays, the treaty could enable over a million additional tobacco deaths each year while claiming to solve the plastic crisis.

Deborah Sy is a lawyer and global health advocate, serving as Head of Strategy and Global Public Policy at the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), the convener of the Stop Tobacco Pollution Alliance (STPA). She is also the Senior Advisor and Founder of Health Justice Philippines, an observer to the UN Environment Program and the UN Plastics Treaty negotiations.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC)
 
On February 27, policymakers worldwide will mark the 20th anniversary of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), the first legally binding global health treaty of its kind. A Treaty That Saved Lives— But the Merchant of Death Still Walks Free

By Deborah Sy and Reina Roa Rodríguez
MANILA, Philippines / PANAMA CITY, Panama, Feb 27 2025 (IPS)

The world took a historic step in the fight against tobacco when the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) came into force—the first legally binding global health treaty of its kind.

Two decades later, it stands as one of the most widely ratified international agreements, with 183 Parties bound by law to safeguard public health from the grip of the tobacco epidemic. The FCTC’s impact has been transformative. Seventy-five percent of its members have implemented at least some of its provisions, saving millions of lives.

Governments have raised tobacco taxes and are able to point to a benchmark rate, introduced graphic health warnings and can refer to a global database of warnings, banned all forms of cigarette advertising to the extent that major social media platforms have algorithms to avoid tobacco advertisements, and treated the FCTC as the minimum standard it was meant to be—for example, by passing laws that require cigarette packs to be simple and free of branding (plain packaging).

Once feared as a trigger for international trade wars, tobacco control measures have been upheld in the World Trade Organization (WTO). With the power of the FCTC, the tobacco transnational’s rights to its brand name and right to sue governments as foreign investors have been trumped in favor of public health.

Despite the FCTC’s near-universal adoption, less than half of the Parties have implemented Article 5.3 measures to prevent industry interference. Yet, where enforced, these safeguards have proven effective, blocking tobacco-funded COVID-19 vaccines from being promoted as corporate social responsibility(CSR).

The treaty also set a global precedent for rejecting tobacco industry partnerships, with the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) barring tobacco companies, the International Labor Organization (ILO) cutting industry funding, and UN agencies prohibiting tobacco-linked Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) collaborations.

FCTC governance has also shaped anti-smuggling efforts. The treaty and its Illicit Trade Protocol have reinforced a key principle: the tobacco industry must not be part of the solution. Governments rejected the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL)’s application for Observer status due to tobacco funding, while the industry-backed track-and-trace system ‘Codentify’ was discredited due to conflicts of interest.

Rebranded Industry in the Age of ESG and Sustainability

The treaty helped delay the projection of 1 billion tobacco deaths in the 21st century—but new tobacco products are creating a fresh crisis.

Despite all these victories in public health, the tobacco industry has been persistently a cog in the machine and has been allowed to not just survive but even evolve. Tobacco giants have pivoted to a new strategy that allows them to hide behind environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives.

They invested in vaping, heated tobacco products (HTPs), and so-called “wellness” ventures, allowing them to create a “harm reduction” narrative while their products hook a whole new generation of youths, marketing themselves as public health allies while their products make people more vulnerable to chronic diseases.

Their CSR programs claim to support environmental sustainability—while they continue to sell the world’s largest source of plastic pollution: cigarette filters. Despite the fact that the UN Agency that shaped ESG trends has shunned tobacco as an ESG-compliant investment, national policies on ESG or CSR reporting are at risk of condoning this.

The COP and the “Dirty Ashtray” Delegations

With the introduction of novel products, tobacco companies gained a newfound sense of credibility and legitimacy, enabling them to influence national policies to exempt vaping from smoke-free laws and advertising ban, ultimately increasing youth exposure to and dependence on recreational addictive products.

The combination of the novel product with new narrative, CSR, direct lobbying, and revolving door appointments of senior government officials has allowed the industry’s influence to grow, even reaching the FCTC’s governing body, the Conference of the Parties (COP) — where tobacco industry arguments have successfully been used to weaken policy language and delay decision-making.

As a result, the FCTC COP failed to take a stronger stance on fully protecting the youth from recreational addictive devices, despite global youth-led coalitions demanding the same.

A Financial Solution: Making Big Tobacco Pay

To those gathering to mark the treaty’s 20th anniversary, a pressing question looms: Will the FCTC’s third decade be the one where Big Tobacco will stop causing harm?

The United States (U.S.) Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) forced the industry to pay $206 billion to U.S. states for healthcare costs. However, such rare legal victories have not succeeded in deterring misconduct. Even the recent Canadian lawsuit demonstrated how Big Tobacco can evade accountability through insolvency proceedings.

Governments need to go beyond litigation and adopt new financial mechanisms to hold the tobacco industry financially accountable: Tobacco companies should be forced to cover health and environmental costs through a polluter pays principle. Specialized tribunals could be designated to process claims without lengthy court battles.

A coordinated effort to harmonize sanctions and costs for harms can prevent Big Tobacco from exploiting regulatory loopholes across countries. Parties can consider establishing a Global Tobacco Control Fund modeled after vaccine injury or environmental compensation funds financed through mandatory industry contributions.

Towards Health Through Justice and Denormalization of the Tobacco Industry

The past decade has seen over 40 countries ban e-cigarettes and many exploring endgame strategies for a cigarette-free world. Belgium proposed a European Union (EU) – wide cigarette butt ban, and an immediate ban was backed by WHO in plastics treaty talks.

This decade also saw machine learning revolutionize real-time monitoring of tobacco industry interference and CSR strategies, curbing digital marketing, and tracking illicit trade. Meanwhile, youths are demanding financial accountability for generational harms.

In the coming decade, the $1.4 trillion annual global cost of smoking will grow to include lost opportunities, rehabilitation expenses for a generation of addicted youth, and the devastating environmental impact of the tobacco industry.

Governments must fully enforce the treaty—particularly Article 18 on environmental protection and Article 19 on liability—to hold tobacco companies financially accountable for the harm they cause, ensuring penalties that deter future misconduct. To stay relevant, the FCTC must continue expanding its influence beyond health, addressing policies on ESG, taxation, finance, and plastics regulation.

The world came together in 2005 to declare that tobacco must be controlled and reduced. In 2025, it must declare that Big Tobacco must be held accountable for 8 million lives lost each year. The merchants of death must not walk.

Atty. Deborah Sy, Head of Global Public Policy and Strategy at the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), is a legal expert in global health and tobacco control. She has played a key role in strengthening global policies on tobacco taxation, industry interference, liability, and environmental protection from tobacco.

Dr Reina Roa Rodríguez currently sits as the President of the Bureau of the FCTC COP and is a globally recognized leader in tobacco control. A technical-political expert at the Panamanian Ministry of Health and a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, she has played a pivotal role in advancing FCTC implementation at national, regional, and global levels.

IPS UN Bureau

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