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Tobacco curbs need not hinge on US, says UNICEF

Thursday, 15 May 1997: The possibility of a setback in efforts to settle tobacco liability cases in the United States does not relieve governments of responsibility to curb the industry's power to entrap children and adolescents elsewhere in the world, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said today.

"Whatever the outcome of the US negotiations, the international community urgently needs a comprehensive, long-term strategy to combat tobacco, particularly in the developing world," she said. "Given the tobacco industry's increasing focus on developing country sales, the need for action is more pressing than ever."

Ms. Bellamy spoke in the wake of press reports this week that optimism is fading for an omnibus liability settlement between major US-based tobacco companies and the attorneys-general of some two dozen states. Ideally, she said, any future restrictions on the sale and promotion of tobacco products in the US market should be applied globally.

On 1 May, she had urged that the US talks be a first step towards worldwide restrictions on the promotion and sale of tobacco products, especially to children and young people in developing countries. She said the marketing of tobacco products is undermining UNICEF efforts to save the lives of millions of children a year from preventable diseases.

An estimated 300 million of today's children and teenagers will eventually die of tobacco-related illness, a third of them in developing countries. The total is projected to rise substantially within 30 years, with the proportion of developing world deaths jumping to two-thirds.

Ms. Bellamy said UNICEF welcomed a recent pledge by environmental officials from the Group of Seven leading industrial nations, the Russian Federation and the European Union to work together to promote education and public awareness of the environmental hazards of tobacco smoke to children. The officials affirmed that tobacco smoke, a known human carcinogen, is a "significant public health risk to young children" that weakens lung capacity and causes respiratory disorders.

Medical researchers have established clear links between smoking in the home and the incidence of acute respiratory infections and asthma in children exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke.

"Acute respiratory infections already kill four million out of the 12 million children under five who die each year in developing countries," Ms. Bellamy said. "Without across-the-board action to curb smoking, those numbers are likely to rise in direct proportion to the global marketing activities of the tobacco industry."

She reiterated the need for prohibitions on the sale of tobacco to minors, greatly increased taxation of tobacco products, and intensified efforts to make the public aware of the addictive qualities of nicotine and the overall dangers of smoking. She said these and other measures are mandated by the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires governments to take steps to promote the health of infants and children; protect them from drugs and exploitation; and ensure that there is adequate health education.

She stressed that rather than recommending specific mechanisms through which governments might address the tobacco issue, UNICEF hoped to draw attention to the urgency of the problem and the range of steps that might be used to bring pressure to bear on the tobacco industry. Since the US talks began, advocates for global tobacco curbs have been discussing which elements of a possible settlement could be useful in fashioning worldwide curbs, and how, in practical terms, this might come about.

"There is obviously a great deal of groundwork that needs to be done," Ms. Bellamy said. Under debate are such ideas as a requirement that US-based tobacco companies not market tobacco products to non-smoking women and children, or any non-smoking population anywhere in the world; that US trade officials agree not to help companies penetrate closed markets outside the US; that the tobacco industry be required to make substantial lump-sum contributions to help multilateral agencies promote tobacco regulation and education; and that any eventual settlement of tobacco-liability lawsuits in the US -- a sum that could total $375 billion over 25 years -- not be financed by international sales.

Smoking among people who took up the habit at an early age currently claims three million lives a year worldwide, a third of them in developing countries. If current smoking rates continue to rise, that figure is expected to jump to 10 million a year, with 70 per cent of the deaths occurring in the developing world.

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