Talks resume on tobacco control treaty

The tobacco lobby continues to exert pressure on countries such as Switzerland Keystone Archive

Continuing pressure from the tobacco lobby on countries like Switzerland is threatening to water down a key international anti-smoking convention.

A third round of negotiations on the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) gets under way this week in Geneva.

Three of the world’s biggest tobacco companies – British American Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco – recently announced a “new initiative”, committing themselves not to direct their marketing activities at non-smokers, especially the young.

“The experience of the past three decades has shown that we simply can’t accept a self-regulatory approach,” says Derek Yach, executive director for non-communicable diseases at the WHO. He says that, in countries where tobacco companies have pledged to moderate their activities, it has set back public health gains dramatically.

“It’s an attempt to undermine the confidence governments have in an inter-governmental process, and to confuse policy makers into believing that there are alternative ways of moving ahead on the marketing of tobacco products” Yach told swissinfo.

Undue influence

Yach says countries that have not traditionally had a strong tobacco company presence – Finland, Norway, New Zealand and Australia, for example — have forged ahead rapidly with a minimum of influence. Those that house the tobacco multinationals – the US, Japan, Germany and Switzerland – have been slower to introduce anti-smoking measures.

“The decisive factor isn’t as much the level of tobacco company activity, as the ability of politicians to overcome undue influence,” Yach says. The tobacco firms have long sought to influence decision makers, he says, by creating front groups or paying scientists to discredit anti-smoking research.

“We know now that that influence went much deeper than we ever suspected. The industry has gone to great lengths to subvert policy in countries as diverse as Switzerland, the UK, Israel, Iran and other countries in the Middle East,” says Yach.

It’s a problem acknowledged by the Swiss Federal Office for Public Health, which has to contend with a strong pro-tobacco lobby in parliament, seen most vividly last May, when the speaker of the lower house, Peter Hess, was forced to quit the board of BAT.

Strong tobacco lobby

“There are certainly quite a number of people in parliament who are against any measure that would reduce smoking,” says Reto Dürler, head of International Affairs at the Federal Office of Public Health.

“Because of the strength of the tobacco lobby in this country, it is very difficult for us to pursue a stringent tobacco control policy,” Dürler told swissinfo.

Dürler, who will be deputy head of the Swiss delegation at the Geneva conference, said that Switzerland’s negotiating position “has to take into account all of the views represented in government, parliament and other circles”. That also includes the people, who in 1993, overwhelmingly rejected a ban on tobacco and alcohol advertising.

That did not prevent the public health office unveiling a major anti-smoking programme in June, which imposed a 57 per cent tax on tobacco products, a ban on their sale to children under the age of 16 and strengthening the health warning on packets. Switzerland has the fourth highest per capita consumption of tobacco in Europe.

Contentious issues

At the global level, the WHO believes it is on target to meet its 2003 deadline for finalising the convention.

The key aim at this latest session of the intergovernmental negotiating body is to discard superfluous text and narrow the debate down to the substantive issues where there are real political differences – on advertising bans, taxation and smuggling. These contentious issues will then be addressed at meetings in 2002.

For the first time, texts on liability, litigation and compensation will be introduced, which would give the convention more teeth.

As with many recent multinational negotiations, much attention will focus on the stance of the United States. Reto Dürler says that there have been clear signals that the Bush administration intends to adopt a much more pro-tobacco industry position than its predecessor. At the World Health Assembly earlier this year, the US delegation rejected moves to limit the activities of tobacco companies.

Watered down

“I’m sure some countries will want a watered down version, but the bulk of countries, particularly in the developing world, want a treaty that really makes a difference to public health,” Yach says.

Cracking down on smoking-related illness has enormous financial implications for developing countries. Money spent treating lung cancer and heart disease could be diverted to treat infectious diseases or vital health awareness campaigns.

In South Africa, which along with Thailand is one of the developing countries that has done most to clamp down on smoking, taxes on tobacco have increased by some 90 per cent in the past five years, while consumption has fallen by 20 per cent.

Yach believes there is still “enormous leeway” to increase taxes on cigarettes. Such taxes the WHO believes have a dramatic effect on consumption. It says a 10 per cent increase in tax will reduce consumption by four per cent in an industrialised country, and up to eight per cent in a developing country.

by Roy Probert