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Protect all children from tobacco, says UNICEF

Monday, 28 July 1997: UNICEF welcomes a public health panel's recommendation to the US Congress that the United States should actively promote tobacco control on a worldwide scale, especially in developing countries, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said today.

Ms. Bellamy spoke in response to a report by the Koop-Kessler Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health, a group formed to advise Congress on a proposed US tobacco liability settlement negotiated by state attorneys general, plaintiffs' lawyers and cigarette makers. The panel is chaired by former US Surgeon-General C. Everett Koop and former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David A. Kessler.

"The members of the committee deserve the highest praise for their recognition that tobacco is a wholly preventable threat to the health and development of young people in every country," Ms. Bellamy said. "They understand that the US, as the world's largest tobacco exporter, has a special responsibility not only for the children within its borders, but in every land."

Of the world's children and teenagers, it is estimated that some 300 million will die of tobacco-related causes in adulthood if current trends continue.

"The global marketing of tobacco is a direct challenge to UNICEF's mission to ensure the survival of children in developing countries, " Ms. Bellamy said. "Acute respiratory infections are killing four million children in those regions every year, a figure that will surely rise in direct proportion to the expanded marketing activities of the tobacco industry. It defies logic to spend millions every year on strategies to save these children, as USAID (US Agency for International Development) is doing, while standing by as the tobacco industry targets them as consumers."

The Koop-Kessler Committee's report, Ms. Bellamy said, is an important contribution to helping the international community develop a global strategy to treat tobacco products commensurate with the harm they cause, beginning with prohibitions on all direct and indirect tobacco advertising and promotional activities aimed at children and young people.

Among its recommendations, the Committee urged that US international policy initiatives include support for tobacco-control activities by such multilateral groups as UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the Pan-American Health Organization.

UNICEF's role in advocating worldwide curbs on tobacco grows out of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which obligates governments to safeguard the health of infants and children; protect children from drugs and exploitation; and promote health education. The Convention, ratified as of last month by 191 countries, is the most universally accepted human rights instrument in history.

"Children have an absolute right to health and development, and their use of tobacco is frequently a consequence of the denial of those rights," Ms. Bellamy said. "We know, for example, that most people who become addicted to tobacco begin using it in the second decade of life -- and that this often happens because they do not have access to information or opportunities to develop the life skills that would help them resist enticements to use tobacco."

In May, the UNICEF Executive Director urged that the US tobacco liability talks be used as a first step towards worldwide restrictions on the sale and promotion of tobacco products, particularly to children and young people in developing countries.

In its report, commissioned by a bipartisan group in Congress and made public on 9 July, the Koop-Kessler panel urges US support for a proposed International Framework Convention for Tobacco Control that would be legally binding on all countries; amendment of US trade legislation that allows American tobacco exporters to pressure countries to let US products compete with domestic brands; and support for an International Tobacco Control Commission that would set standards, monitor global tobacco control efforts, and assist non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Of the world's 1.1 billion smokers, some three million die each year of tobacco-related causes, two million of them in industrialized countries. If current trends continue, the global death toll is expected to rise to 10 million a year by the 2020s or 2030s -- seven million in the developing countries. There is also a higher rate of miscarriages among expectant mothers who smoke, and smoking during pregnancy has been linked to low birth weight, a factor strongly associated with infant mortality and illness. Smoking in the home has also been linked to an increased incidence of asthma and acute respiratory infections in children.

Ms. Bellamy said tobacco-related health problems will undermine development efforts in poor countries, not only by burdening already strained health care systems, but through economic losses connected to such problems as absenteeism, reduced productivity, fire losses related to smoking, and lost income because of premature death.

"It is encouraging to see the growing public outcry against tobacco marketing efforts in the US, especially those aimed at children and adolescents -- a trend dramatized by the recent decision by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to retire its ‘Joe Camel' marketing cartoon," Ms. Bellamy said. "But it is clear that the industry's willingness to modify its advertising and accept some liability for the health effects of their products in the US is linked to something much bigger: the vast potential for profit and growth in the overseas market, particularly in terms of cigarette sales to children and women in the developing world."

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