четверг, 28 июня 2007 г.

Tobacco use

Tobacco use is a growing global epidemic, hitting the third world, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union the hardest. Ten million people will die each year from tobacco-related diseases by 2030. The U.S. government has long assisted the international expansion of U.S. tobacco multinationals through promotional trade policies and tolerance of double standards in industry behavior. Negotiations on a global tobacco treaty could help rein in Big Tobacco's global expansion. The human costs of tobacco use are staggering and rising dramatically. Every eight seconds, someone in the world dies from tobacco use- 4 million deaths a year. If current trends continue, that number will soar to 10 million by 2030, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), with 70% of those deaths occurring in the third world. Given these figures, over 150 million people will die from tobacco-related diseases over the next 30 years-exceeding the toll from AIDS, automobile accidents, maternal mortality, homicide, and suicide combined. As the world's biggest cigarette exporter and as home to the world's largest multinational cigarette company, Philip Morris, the United States has a special responsibility to address this catastrophe. Facing declining markets in developed countries, the U.S. tobacco industry has aggressively expanded overseas, particularly in recently opened markets in Asia, the former Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, where the bulk of the world's smokers live. Philip Morris now sells more cigarettes abroad than it does in the United States. Philip Morris currently earns half of its cigarette profits overseas, garners almost two-thirds of its tobacco revenues in foreign markets, and sells more than three-quarters of its cigarettes outside the United States. The company's international gains come after two decades of heavy overseas spending to advertise its products, buy newly privatized cigarette companies, set up joint ventures, and build distribution and sales networks. Philip Morris is now a truly global company, exporting not only cigarettes but the slick advertising and marketing strategies that successfully addicted generations of people in the United States. The tobacco multinationals hook kids and unsuspecting adults-especially women-around the world on tobacco by using exactly the sorts of promotional and marketing techniques that have largely been abandoned or outlawed in the United States-free cigarette giveaways, television advertising, promotional t-shirts and hats, sporting events and rock music concert sponsorships, etc. Other than laws of general proscription, such as those prohibiting bribery, there are no U.S. laws or regulations specifically governing the overseas activities of Big Tobacco. In fact, multinational cigarette companies like Philip Morris have long relied on the U.S. government to help them promote smoking overseas. Official U.S. promotion of tobacco exports to developing countries started in earnest after World War II. Under the guise of providing assistance to needy countries, the federal government's Food for Peace program shipped hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tobacco to developing countries until the end of the 1970s. In the 1980s, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), working hand-in-glove with U.S. cigarette companies, used the threat of trade sanctions to pry open key markets in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand. The Thai case went to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), where a trade panel stated that Thailand must open its tobacco market but-in a rare move for the trade body-it also said that Thailand could maintain stringent health regulations. How that decision will impact potential future trade and tobacco decisions at the GATT's successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO), is unclear. The Clinton administration ended the Reagan/Bush practice of using trade threats to force open markets to the U.S. tobacco industry. But the U.S.-China treaty that preceded the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China included a provision requiring China to slash its tariffs on imported cigarettes. Wherever U.S. cigarettes go, teen smoking rates rise, especially among girls. The opening of Asian markets to U.S. cigarettes escalated Asian smoking rates 10% above what they would have been, according to one econometric study. Price competition and advertising were largely responsible for this rise. With the long lag time between increases in smoking prevalence and smoking-related mortality and morbidity, these countries will experience severe and growing economic and human losses for some time to come. In 1999, member states of the World Health Organization unanimously agreed to launch negotiations on a global tobacco treaty. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), as this treaty will be called, represents a historic effort by the international community to promote a coordinated international response to one of the most deadly epidemics of our time. The negotiation and implementation of the FCTC could make an enormous contribution to stemming the growth of the global tobacco epidemic by fostering multilateral cooperation on aspects of tobacco control that transcend national boundaries, such as tobacco smuggling and the global marketing of tobacco products. The FCTC process could also raise awareness, as well as mobilize technical and financial resources, for effective national tobacco control measures that would help rein in Big Tobacco. Unwilling to cooperate in this global health effort, the tobacco industry is trying to undermine the negotiations by lobbying developing country governments and spreading misinformation.

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