United Bharat- Tobacco Industry blocks treaty progress toward saving lives

October 7, 2010

Tobacco industry watchdog Corporate Accountability International, Network for Accountability of Tobacco Transnationals (NATT), and its allies released a report to mark the 10th International Week of Resistance to Tobacco Transnationals (IWR) documenting widespread tobacco industry interference in the implementation of the global tobacco treaty (formally known as the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control – WHO FCTC).

What’s at stake are as many as 20 crore (200 million) lives – the number of lives the World Health Organization projects would be spared by 2050 if the global tobacco treaty takes full effect. Tobacco industry interference remains the single greatest obstacle to this objective which is in direct defiance of the global tobacco treaty (WHO FCTC), specifically its Article 5.3, which deems such industry interference to be in fundamental conflict with the treaty’s public health aims. Today, tobacco kills one million people in India each year.

In 2009, shortly after the formal adoption of Article 5.3 Guidelines, India's national tobacco control coalition, the Advocacy Forum for Tobacco Control (AFTC), exposed a conference which claimed to have the support of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Government of India, and sought to engage the tobacco industry as one of the stakeholders. The coalition formally brought this to the attention of the Health Ministry, which reported lack of any formal consent given to the conference organizers. The ministry officials further acknowledged that association with the tobacco conference would be a violation of the Article 5.3 Guidelines of the treaty. They brought an end to the speculations about the Ministry's involvement in this conference.

In 2008, the Health Ministry revealed before the Central Information Commission that the tobacco industry was pressuring it to relax the tobacco control policies.

In past months of 2010, Institute of Public Health, Bangalore’s Dr Upendra Bhojani, led a campaign exposing a global tobacco industry networking meeting (held in October 2010) where Government of India’s Tobacco Board was involved. In compliance with Article 5.3 of the global tobacco treaty in India, the court intervened stopping the government of India’s involvement in a tobacco industry’s networking meeting in Bangalore, India.

Over the past years, India has faced major blows with repeated deferment of the implementation of the pictorial health warnings on tobacco products. After at least, seven delays, the weak pictorial warnings were finally implemented on 1st June 2009 in India. Again the implementation of new stronger pictorial warnings from 1st June 2010 was postponed to 1st December 2010, a result of the ongoing lobbying and pressure by the tobacco industry and its allies.

Other countries in the region are taking steps to protect their government officials from such industry interference and pressure. For example, the Philippines Department of Health and Civil Service Commission announced a joint memorandum circular that closely follows the Article 5.3 Guidelines. The new policy explicitly limits interactions of government personnel with the tobacco industry, requires transparency in interactions with the tobacco industry, and requires reporting of any interaction or offer of donation from the tobacco industry. 

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