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Big Tobacco Buys Influence And Access
June 2008

Latin America Coordinator Yul Francisco Dorado does the media circuit in Central America to raise awareness and support for the global tobacco treaty.

The largest preventable global epidemic is now claiming 5.4 million lives each year, according to a new World Health Organization study. Such staggering figures are lighting a new fire under the more than 150 countries that have ratified the global tobacco treaty.

This November, these countries will meet in Durban, South Africa, to make critical decisions on how the treaty is enforced and implemented. Corporate Accountability International organizers will be on hand to ensure that strong guidelines to resist tobacco industry interference in the treaty’s implementation are adopted.

“The global tobacco treaty establishes that the tobacco industry has a conflict of interest with public health, and therefore should have no influence on health policies,” says Kathy Mulvey, international policy director for Corporate Accountability International.

And though the treaty prohibits tobacco industry interference in health policies, tobacco corporations are brazenly demanding a seat at the table in setting the health agenda. .

Mexico is but one example:

Carlos Slim Hélu, the world’s second-richest person (behind Warren Buffett), joined the board of directors of Philip Morris International (PMI) when it split from Altria Group, Inc. earlier this year. It is Slim’s second tour on the board of the world’s largest and most profitable tobacco transnational. Now Slim has used $500 million of his wealth to create the Carso Health Institute, which funds health-related projects and researches health priorities in Latin America. Slim tapped Julio Frenk, Mexico’s former health minister (and a former candidate for Director-General of the World Health Organization), to head the institute.

Frenk is notorious as the architect of a 2004 voluntary agreement between the Mexican government and the tobacco giants. Just weeks after becoming the first country in the Americas to ratify the global tobacco treaty, Mexico agreed not to raise tobacco taxes if PMI and British American Tobacco (BAT) funded certain health programs. This agreement led to the defeat of numerous tobacco control regulations, including tax increases and the comprehensive advertising ban called for by the global tobacco treaty.

Giving these Marlboro Men the reins over Latin American health priorities could steer the region away from urgently needed tobacco control policies.

This and other case studies of industry interference will be featured in Corporate Accountability International’s 2008 Global Tobacco Treaty Action Guide, due to be released prior to the November meeting.

“The Action Guide is a powerful tool for governments and public health advocates, and is a centerpiece of our organizing to prevent Big Tobacco from causing more than a billion deaths this century,” said Mulvey.

Look for the 2008 Global Tobacco Treaty Action Guide soon at www.StopCorporateAbuse.org.