UN presses for worldwide curbs on tobacco

By Jacqui Thornton, Health correspondent Copyright 1999 Sunday Telegraph Jan 31, 1999

The World Health Organisation is to attempt the unprecedented step of banning tobacco advertising - and possibly smoking in public - across the world.

The United Nations agency plans to introduce the world's first public health treaty by 2003. It would be legally binding if ratified by member states and would cover areas such as the harmonisation of taxes on tobacco and legislation on smuggling, advertising, sponsorship and labelling.

Critics say the idea is unworkable and have branded the WHO a "super nanny".

A senior member of the WHO's Tobacco-Free Initiative, which is preparing the convention, confirmed last week that a ban on smoking in public places was also being considered. The push for a treaty is being spearheaded by the WHO director general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, working with the World Bank and the UN children's fund, Unicef.

Dr Brundtland said last year: "Smoking should not be advertised, subsidised or glamorised. We are engaging in a broad alliance to drive home this message, especially to support countries which are not prepared to face the tide that may be coming."

With multinational tobacco firms now turning their marketing efforts to poorer nations and to women, the WHO says global action with legal force is needed to support national efforts to combat smoking.

According to WHO projections, tobacco will kill 10 million people a year by 2020, nearly three times the current level. The organisation's proposals received support in Britain yesterday from the Government-funded Health Education Authority. A spokesman said: "We will support anything that will encourage people not to smoke. It is the biggest killer in the country."

Clive Bates, director of the pressure group, Action on Smoking and Health, said the convention would clip the wings of tobacco giants which were targeting the developing world now that they had been forced to limit advertising in the West. He said: "The companies are more powerful than many countries."

Alan Duncan, the Conservative health spokesman, said: "I'm all for reducing global smoking, but the WHO cannot make global law just like that. It is nations above all who should make law in a democratic way."

Juliette Wallbridge, of the smokers' rights lobby group, Forest, said: "It will be a cold day in hell before countries increase taxes to our level. I sometimes wonder what planet the WHO are living on. The indications in the UK are that a more sensible approach is being taken to let adults live their own lives."

Tobacco firms, which are bracing themselves for a fight with the WHO, fear that the agency wants ultimately to ban tobacco worldwide. Chris Proctor, of British and American Tobacco, said: "Our concern is we now have a super nanny that seems to be dictating things to governments around the world which have been addressing tobacco issues for an awfully long time."

He said the "dictating of rules and regulations through a legal control mechanism" made little sense, given the different nature of countries, many of which were heavily dependent on tobacco growing.

Enforcing global treaties can be a long, difficult process. For instance, the 1997 Kyoto treaty on climate change requires ratification by 55 states to bring it into force, but so far, fewer than 10 have done so.

However, Dr Chaloka Beyani, a lecturer in international law at the London School of Economics, said the WHO's move was significant because, in the past, the organisation had been concerned only with "lofty goals and aspirations".

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