PHA-Exchange> LANDMARK UN TOBACCO-CONTROL TREATY REACHES RATIFICATION GOAL TO BECOME LAW

[Claudio]

From: "Vern Weitzel" <vern.weitzel at undp.org>

LANDMARK UN TOBACCO-CONTROL TREATY REACHES RATIFICATION GOAL TO BECOME LAW
New York, Dec  1 2004 11:00AM
The United Nations landmark global treaty to curb tobacco use, which now
claims almost 5 million
lives a year and causes an estimated annual net loss of $200 billion in
treatment and lost
productivity, will enter into force in 90 days now that 40 countries have
ratified it, the UN health
agency announced today.

The World Health Organization
<"http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2004/pr89/en/">(WHO)
Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) requires treaty parties to
restrict tobacco
advertising, sponsorship and promotion, set new labelling and clean indoor
air controls, and
strengthen laws clamping down on tobacco smuggling in the war on the world’s
leading cause of
preventable deaths.

If current trends are not reversed, tobacco will prematurely end the lives
of 10 million people a
year by 2020. It is the only legal product that causes the death of one half
of its regular users.
This means that of the current 1.3 billion smokers, 650 million people will
die prematurely due to
tobacco.

Following yesterday’s ratification by Peru - the 40th country to do so - the
treaty will become the
first international legally binding public health pact under the agency’s
auspices on 28 February.
It has become one of the most rapidly embraced UN conventions, with 167 WHO
Member States and the
European Community (EC) having already signed it.

The economic costs of tobacco use are devastating. In addition to the high
public health price of
treating tobacco-caused diseases, the product kills people at the height of
their productivity.

Tobacco users are also less productive while they are alive due to increased
sickness. A 1994 report
estimated that the use of tobacco resulted in an annual global net loss of
$200 billion, a third of
this loss being in developing countries.