Worldwide Anti-Tobacco Treaty Takes Effect

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Worldwide Anti-Tobacco Treaty Takes Effect

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | February 27, 2005

GENEVA - A global anti-tobacco treaty came into effect on Sunday, but a leading expert said it needed strengthening quickly if it was to be effective in curbing smoking, which claims five million lives a year.

The treaty requires countries that ratify it to restrict tobacco advertising and sponsorship, put tougher health warnings on cigarettes and limit use of language like "low tar" and "light."

Of the 168 countries that signed the accord, only 57 have ratified it. China and the United States are among those that have not ratified the pact.

Dr. Derek Yach, the World Health Organization's former anti-tobacco chief and the official who oversaw the drafting of the treaty, hailed the accord, known as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, as a first step.

However, he said late last week that the treaty lacked what the United Nations called protocols - additional agreements that toughen specific areas of a looser accord.

"The framework without protocols is toothless," Dr. Yach said. "Yet even preliminary work on these is over a year from even being discussed, let alone planned for."

The ratifying nations are to enact price and tax increases, create controls on secondhand smoke and sales of cigarettes to youngsters, and clamp down on smuggling.

Dr. Yach, who is now professor of global public health at Yale University, was deeply involved in four years of often bitter negotiations brokered by the W.H.O., the United Nations health agency.

The treaty, which was completed in May 2003, aims to reduce substantially the number of deaths from tobacco-related illnesses, like cancer and heart disease, which the W.H.O. estimates kills one smoker every 6.5 seconds.

The world has an estimated 1.2 billion smokers and W.H.O. surveys show that smoking rates among 13- to 15-year-old children are about 20 percent.

Health officials say they fear those figures will explode as the world's population grows.

By 2010, the annual death toll is expected to double, to 10 million - with 70 percent of the victims in developing countries least able to pay for treating smoking-related illnesses.

Dr. Yach said governments, particularly those with few anti-tobacco policies, needed clear, exact guidelines on what they should do to carry out the treaty.

"Evidence suggests that the only way to have a rapid impact on deaths from tobacco is to step up cessation efforts and combine them with smoke-free policies," he said. But he said the treaty was "relatively weak on these issues."

With the new rules in place, studies suggest the demand for cigarettes would fall only 1 percent to 2 percent a year, W.H.O. officials have said.

"No targets were ever discussed" for the treaty, "so we do not have a sense of what constitutes success," Dr. Yach said. He also said poor countries would need substantial financial help in carrying out the treaty's provisions.

Ratifying countries that fail to enact reforms face no penalties.