Handsel Art
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
13 April 2012
contact J.R. Few
or 870-427-1365
World No Tobacco Day 2012
In 2003 the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), recognizing tobacco as the leading global cause of death and disease. To date there are 170 parties to the treaty focusing on key tobacco prevention strategies including: adopting tax increases to reduce prevalence, banning tobacco advertising, creating tobacco free spaces, placing prominent warnings on packaging, and combating tobacco smuggling. Responding to a growing tobacco pandemic, the FCTC represents the world’s first global health treaty and affirms the right of all people to the highest standard of health. That has not prevented the tobacco industry from aggressively trying to undermine the efforts of the FCTC. The WHO has selected “Tobacco Industry Interference” in the FCTC as the theme for this year’s World No Tobacco Day, May 31st.
In this country, 50 years of the tobacco industry’s sophisticated efforts opposing the public health gained a federal court conviction for racketeering and fraud in 2006. Today, the growth market for tobacco extends beyond our borders but industry efforts are no less deceitful and manipulative. Front groups and public relation firms have promoted the same pseudo-science regarding secondhand smoke and tobacco globally. Internal documents have shown the industry makes extensive use of media to manipulate research and public opinion to oppose tobacco taxes, marketing reform, and tobacco free space all over the world. One of the most infamous evidences of industry interference was a 1999 paper, commissioned by Philip Morris, stating that in Czechoslovakia smoking was actually beneficial because a decreased lifespan saved pension funding.
Litigation continues to be one of the tobacco industry’s strengths. In countries from Uruguay to Germany, tobacco industry lawyers have hindered and thwarted challenges to tobacco prevalence. Graphic warnings in the U.S., plain packaging in Australia, and regulating displays in the U.K. are all being challenged in their respective courts.
Perhaps the most heinous industry tactic is the infiltration and manipulation of otherwise well intentioned advocate groups. Youth tobacco education programs, funded by the tobacco industry, employed all over the world, show little success in preventing initiation and can actually enhance tobacco use. Project Sunrise, revealed by industry documents, exposes a plan to collaborate with, and manipulate, public health groups, legislation, and individuals to compromise and weaken tobacco free efforts.
The lengths to which the tobacco industry will go is perhaps limitless. The message of World No Tobacco Day 2012 is that challenging tobacco necessitates that public health advocates understand a paradigm shift recognizing a profit driven pandemic unlike any the world has ever known.
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