Posted on 02/19/2003 7:17:52 AM PST by new cruelty
More than 190 countries yesterday began the sixth and final round of negotiations on an international tobacco control treaty designed to reverse the growing worldwide toll of deaths from smoking.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the World Health Organisation, said the pact aimed to save "hundreds of millions of lives".
The proposed framework convention on tobacco control, the first-ever global health treaty negotiated by the WHO, will include binding rules on tobacco taxation, smuggling, advertising and promotion, product regulation, and smoking prevention and treatment.
It is due to be adopted by health ministers at the WHO's annual assembly in May.
"The tobacco epidemic is killing 4.9m people every year, which will double in 20 years if we do nothing to stop it", Dr Brundtland said. "We know that a big part of the solution lies in promoting stop-smoking programmes, raising tobacco taxes, increasing education, banning tobacco advertising and cracking down on smuggling."
According to WHO estimates based on current smoking trends, tobacco will soon be the world's biggest killer, causing more deaths than Aids, maternal mortality, car accidents, murder and suicide combined.
About 70 per cent of smoking-related deaths from lung cancer, heart disease, strokes and other diseases will occur in developing countries.
Anti-tobacco activists have criticised the draft treaty as too weak, claiming that the WHO has bowed to pressure from the US, Japan and Germany - home to powerful tobacco companies - to water down key provisions.
In particular, the draft does not require a total advertising ban although this has the support of the great majority of rich and poor countries.
However, Dr Brundtland, who set the tobacco talks in motion and has made them a priority of her five-year term in office, said the draft was "an excellent basis for an effective treaty". The text made clear that an advertising ban was the ultimate goal, and countries with planning bans could make binding declarations to that effect.
Luis Felipe de Seixas Corrêa, Brazil's Geneva ambassador and chairman of the talks, said what was wanted was "an effective convention that will make a difference" to public health, and that meant obtaining the support of a large number of key countries.
"Then we can go forward", he said.
'Death clock' a grim reminder of perils of smoking
Geneva - The smoking "death clock" is running at nine people a minute - and it is ticking faster all the time.
The head of the World Health Organisation, Gro Harlem Brundtland, has urged governments to get their act together to curb millions of smoking-related deaths.
The WHO chief unveiled the "death clock" yesterday, showing that more than 13,3-million people have died from smoking-related diseases in four years.
WHO hopes an international anti-tobacco treaty will be finalised in time for adoption at the May meeting of the World Health Assembly, the UN health agency's 191-nation decision-making body.
"This treaty is about saving lives, hundreds of millions of lives," Brundtland said.
"This is an enormous burden and we need to take it seriously," she added.
"Every one of those people could have lived longer or suffered less."
The so-called Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is meant to restrict advertising and marketing, control label- ling, cut secondhand smoke and limit smuggling and thereby slow the expected explosion in cancer and heart disease.
The final round of talks focuses on a draft treaty drawn up by negotiating chairperson Luis Felipe de Seixas Correa.
Health campaigners say the draft has been gradually watered down and is now too weak to dent the rising death toll.
They claim the Brazilian diplomat caved in to pressure from the United States, Japan and Germany, which are all home to powerful tobacco company interests, and have been repeatedly accused of trying to wreck the treaty.
Tom Novotny, a former US assistant surgeon-general who headed the US delegation until 2001, said he quit as chief negotiator to protest against orders by President George W Bush's administration to weaken the text.
But US Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said the United States was fully committed to a "strong and dynamic" treaty to fight the "devastating health, economic and social consequences of worldwide tobacco consumption".
The draft says countries should take measures to restrict tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship in accordance with its national constitution, saying these "may" include a total ban.
African and Asian countries are angry that the text falls short of demands by the majority of countries for a total ban on advertising. Senegal's ambassador, Ousmane Camara, told the meeting that African nations had not been consulted properly over the draft.
The US has long held out against a total advertising ban, saying it would violate its constitutional provisions on free speech.
The draft also drops an explicit reference contained in a previous version of the text to a progressive ban on sponsorship of sports and cultural events, and drops proposals to phase out vending machines.
It introduces new requirement for health warnings to take up at least 30% of a cigarette packet.
Gro Harlem Brundtland looking to save the world from ill health is not looking into clean drinking water or sanitation or a world free of the myriad drugs available on the market; no she is going after a legal substance on Junque Science theories, the easy target and the one that gets the lady the most print. The WHO is barking up the wrong tree and like others before them with blinders on their eyes, refuse to go after real health problems because those REAL problems are not popular or trendy among the meddling elitists. Smoking harms no one with the possible exception of the smoker.
Bullsheet! This is about raising taxes on a legal product. If they want to "Save" lifes then make tobacco illegal! How about taxing liquor another 500%? Oh wait, politicians drink don't they? Logic dictates that if you raise the price of something then something else cannot be afforded.
The tobacco "Settlement" lawsuit was to go towards education programs regarding tobacco and instead states have just used it as another means of income to support infrastructure. Nice to see a shiny new fire truck going down the road knowing I have helped pay for it.
Why does every "good conservative" think he has to become an apologist for such a disgusting vice? Instead of beating the libertarian drum for tobacco (while crusading against marijuana) the Right could make the laws against smoking--a clear case of legislating morality--into a justification for more laws that enforce morality (laws against sodomy, pornography, public lewdness, etc.). But oh no. Conservatives are supposed to champion smoking. Even Cal Thomas, that born-again evangelical ethical perfectionist, toes the line against "the nanny state's" war against tobacco. I suppose he feels that the banning of tobacco ads from broadcasting is a "violation" of the First Amendment. But if we did have tobacco advertsing today (considering the decadent state of our current culture) can you imagine how pornographic they would be? Then Cal and Co. would crusade for their removal from broadcasting on moral grounds and the First Amendment would never be mentioned.
Smoking is the only vice that forces unwilling people to participate (by means of those formerly omnipresent, foul clouds of tobacco smoke). I suppose the rest of the conservative movement is happy to be identified in the public mind with this hideous and savage vice, but I am not. I'm sorry if I'm the only one who feels this way.
The war on tobacco is just about the only development in recent society I agree with. I refuse to believe that reversals in the downward spirals in other areas must be accompanied by the rebirth of near universal smoking.
I thought the UN types were concerned with over population? This contradiction confuses me. Oh wait they only care about control. Now it all make sense.
Albeit expensive, it does thin the herd!
Just replace the word "smoking" with the word "blowjob" (please pardon my language) and see if you would have the same libertarian views about the rights of private property owners.
Believe me, if it were up to me tobacco would be banned (as King James I tried to ban it). Unfortunately, it is such a cash cow through tax dollars and lawsuits that that will never happen, no matter how many people complain about its upcoming demise.
I may be the only conservative left in this country who opposes smoking, but I am going to hold to my position, however "politically incorrect" it is. I stand by my statement that the restrictions on smoking are the one and only development in current culture I agree with, and I do not want the reversal of societal and cultural decline dogmatically tied to a return to the old omnipresence of smoking.
Anyplace in this country where it is legal for a woman to give a man a blowjob, I would support the right of a privately owned business to give people a venue that would allow such.
Anyplace that it is illegal for a woman to give a man a blowjob, I would not support the right of a privately owned business to give people a venue to allow such.
As long as there is not a federal law against smoking it should be up to the states to make smoking legal or illegal.
If it is a legal activity then privately owned businesses should be given the opportunity to allow that LEGAL activity.
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