‘World No Tobacco Day’ exposes tobacco industry interference
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Editor,
World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) is observed around the world every year on May 31 to encourage cessation from all forms of tobacco consumption across the globe. Because tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) created this day of action in 1987. This year, globally, more than five million people will die from heart attack, stroke, cancer, lung disease, or other illnesses related to tobacco use. An additional 600,000 people – more than a quarter of them children – will die from exposure to secondhand smoke. The global epidemic of tobacco use has killed 100 million people during the 20th century and could kill an estimated one billion people during the 21st century.
Each year, a different ‘theme’ is chosen by the WHO to focus attention on a specific aspect of tobacco control efforts. This year, the theme is “tobacco industry interference.” The campaign will focus on the need to expose and counter the tobacco industry’s brazen and increasingly aggressive attempts to undermine the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
This year, more and more countries are moving to fully meet their obligations under the guidelines of the WHO framework and have completed a new Center for Disease Control (CDC) report regarding cigarette package warning labels and smokers’ interest in quitting because of those warning labels. In conjunction with WNTD, the CDC released this new report on warning labels in 14 countries. With few exceptions, most smokers (more than 90 percent) reported noticing a cigarette package warning. Findings also indicate that there was wide variation in thinking about quitting smoking because of the cigarette package warning, ranging from 76.6 percent of Brazilian women to 16.1 percent of Polish men. (Source: www.cdc.gov)
An example of why WHO chose the current theme of “tobacco industry interference” is because several large tobacco companies recently adopted the novel tactic of suing several of these countries under bilateral investment treaties, claiming that the warning labels impinge on the company’s attempts to market their legally-registered brands in that country. The industry’s attempts to undermine the treaty continue on other fronts too, especially in regard to countries’ attempts to ban smoking in enclosed public places and to ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.
World No Tobacco Day 2012 will educate policy-makers and the general public about the tobacco industry’s reprehensible and harmful tactics. It will also support and strengthen the spirit of the WHO’s FCTC. The preamble of the treaty recognizes “the need to be alert to any efforts by the tobacco industry to undermine or subvert tobacco control efforts and the need to be informed of activities of the tobacco industry that have a negative impact on tobacco control efforts.”
Diana Schwab
Polson
