WHEN: 12 noon - 1pm, Tuesday, Nov 18th
WHO: Robert Weissman, Co-Director, Essential Action Christina Reyes, Coordinator, Latino Issues Forum - Tobacco-Free College Campuses Project Judy Wilkenfeld, Director of International Programs, Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids
WHERE: Torch of Friendship (north Bayfront Park) Biscayne Blvd & NE 3rd St. Miami, FL
Sponsored by: Essential Action, Latino Issues Forum - Tobacco-Free College Campuses Project, San Francisco Tobacco-Free Coalition, Corpwatch, American Lung Association of Florida
More information: www.essentialaction.org/tobacco/event/ftaa/
Contact Essential Action for more information and/or to get involved! Call or email Anna White (awhite@essential.org or 202-413-9443)
***************************************************
HEALTH BEFORE TRADE: TOBACCO OUT OF THE FTAA!
On November 20-21, 2003, trade representatives of the U.S. and 33 other countries throughout the Americas will meet in Miami, FL for the next round of negotiations on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The stated purpose of the FTAA is to increase trade and investment in the region, but are more cigarettes what the people of the Americas need?
Tobacco is a product like no other, in that it kills if used as intended. According to the Pan American Health Organization, tobacco already kills more than a million people a year in the Americas, including 440,000 deaths in the U.S. alone. If FTAA negotiators truly care about the health and well-being of people throughout the region, they must recognize the unique and deadly nature of tobacco and treat it differently than other commodities.
Unfortunately the draft text of the FTAA fails to distinguish between tobacco and other products. As such, it poses a major threat to efforts to protect the lives and lungs of people throughout the Americas from profit-hungry tobacco corporations. The best way to avoid this threat would be to exclude tobacco from the scope of the FTAA altogether.
Failure to exclude tobacco from the FTAA would give multinational tobacco corporations a variety of means to threaten sound tobacco control policies throughout the Americas. For example, tobacco corporations might invoke intellectual property protections to oppose bans on the use of misleading descriptors like “mild” and “light,” alleging that such prohibitions interfere with trademark-protected names that include such terms; contest the strengthening of health warnings, arguing that they infringe upon trademark rights; and challenge ingredient disclosure laws, claiming a violation of trade secret protections – all arguments they have made under other trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Technical barriers to trade and service agreements may conflict with efforts to label cigarettes, ban the use of misleading descriptors, restrict tobacco product retail distribution networks, and limit tobacco advertising and marketing.
Most worrisome are foreign investment protections. Investment protections of the type included in NAFTA would give companies such as Philip Morris, BAT and Japan Tobacco standing to directly challenge national and sub-national laws that they claim are tantamount to an expropriation of their property. Under NAFTA, such claims may be made on broad grounds. Philip Morris has already suggested that a Canadian ban on "light" and "mild" is tantamount to an expropriation of its trademark on products such as Benson & Hedges Lights and Rothmans Extra Light. The mere prospect of such challenges to tobacco control laws may deter countries from adopting sound public health measures, leading to countless, preventable deaths.
There is no legitimate rationale for including tobacco products – a lethal good – in trade agreements. The best way to avert these potential harms to public health would be to exclude tobacco products from the scope of the FTAA altogether.
More information: www.essentialaction.org/tobacco/trade/
TAKE ACTION: Send a fax to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, urging him to exclude tobacco from the FTAA! http://petitions.globalink.org/view.php?code=ftaa
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. NoNonsense English offers this material non-commercially for research and educational purposes. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, i.e. the media service or newspaper which first published the article online and which is indicated at the top of the article unless otherwise specified.