WHO vote will see UK smoking curbed

Radical measures from the World Health Organisation could see smoking reduced dramatically in the UK.

The 192 members of the World Health Organization today unanimously adopted the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) which requires countries to impose restrictions on tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion, establish new labelling and clean indoor air controls and strengthen legislation to clamp down on tobacco smuggling.

Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of the WHO to the 56th World Health Assembly, said: “Today, we are acting to save billions of lives and protect people’s health for generations to come. This is a historic moment in global public health, demonstrating the international will to tackle a threat to health head on.

“Now we must see this Convention come into force as soon as possible, and countries must use it as the basis of their national tobacco-control legislation.”

Four years in the making, the FCTC has been a priority in the WHO’s global work to stem the "tobacco epidemic". Tobacco now kills some five million people each year – this death toll could reach 10 million by 2020, says the WHO, if countries do not implement the measures of the FCTC. To bring the FCTC into force, forty countries are needed to ratify or otherwise accept it.

While smoking rates are declining in some industrialised countries, they are increasing, especially among the young, in many developing countries. These will account for over 70% of that projected death toll.

Deborah Arnott, Director of the anti-tobacco campaigning group ASH, said: “One by one countries declared their strong support for the treaty as it stood, and it was adopted as is. It was a slap in the face for the US which rather grudgingly agreed to adopt but said it would be reviewing the text before going any further.

“ASH is calling upon countries to set a target date for ratification by the next World Health Assembly in 2004. This is a brown plague killing 5 million people a year which is entirely preventable – time must not be lost in bringing the treaty into force.”

According to ASH, tobacco has a mortality rate of 50% - half of those in middle age.

The anti-tobaco group says that SARS is only currently estimated to kill 1 in 5 of those who contract the disease.

(GMcG)