LONDON (Reuters Health) – The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday called on governments to implement tough controls on tobacco advertising and ignore a plan for voluntary regulation proposed by cigarette manufacturers.
The appeal came 3 weeks before representatives of 191 countries are due to meet in Geneva for a third round of negotiations on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a WHO-sponsored agreement aimed at setting global rules for tobacco control.
In September, three of the world's largest cigarette producers–British American Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco–agreed on a new international marketing code that limits marketing activities directed at non-smokers and the young.
WHO said the initiative was neither new nor effective, and that the corporate scheme was a "massive global public relations bid" to sidetrack governments from implementing stronger agreements.
"We have seen no evidence that tobacco companies are capable of self-regulation," WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland said in a statement.
According to the WHO, deaths from tobacco-related diseases rose to 4.2 million in 2000 from 4 million in 1999 and will continue to rise unless tough action is taken.
It estimates that 150 million people could die in the first two decades of this century because of smoking, with the developing world accounting for 70% of the deaths.
"We know what works and what doesn't. Voluntary codes have proved to be a failure," said Joy de Bayer, Tobacco Control Coordinator at the World Bank. "A World Bank-WHO study, on the other hand, found that interventions like comprehensive advertisement bans and price increases have a measurable and sustained impact on decreased tobacco use," she continued.
WHO noted that voluntary codes adopted by in the United States, Canada and Britain had all been found wanting.
"No country has succeeded in designing regulations that eliminate children's exposure to tobacco advertising while allowing advertising aimed at adult smokers," it said.
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