NZ signs international tobacco control treaty

4.00pm

New Zealand formally signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) today in Geneva, Switzerland, home of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Officials behind the pact, which emerged in March after four years of hard WHO negotiations, said commitment appeared to be so high that the pact could be in force by the end of the year.

"I urge countries throughout the world to follow the example of those here today -- to swiftly sign and then ratify this treaty," WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland, who steps down next month, said in a statement.

The former Norwegian prime minister, once a family doctor, had set attainment of a treaty against a scourge that kills some five million people a year as the centrepiece of her four-year term at the head of the United Nations agency.

The pact needs 40 signatures to be ratified by national legislatures before it becomes law in those countries. It will be open for signature at UN headquarters in New York until July 2004.

Countries signing at a special ceremony at WHO's Geneva headquarters, where the pact was approved by 190 nations at a key conference last month, ranged from Brazil, Botswana and Iran to Britain, New Zealand and Spain.

Absent were the United States, where the administration of President George W Bush had opposed parts of the accord, particularly an advertising ban, and Germany and China, both heavy-smoking nations with high revenues from tobacco sales.

But Derek Yach, Brundtland's chief aide for the anti-smoking effort, told a news conference US health officials were showing they were "very engaged in global tobacco control" by working on the issue, especially child smoking, with the WHO.

Costas Stefanis, Health Minister of current EU president Greece, said the treaty -- the first-ever legally binding global public health pact -- "shows the will of the peoples to go against organised interests, the tobacco companies".

And Sandra Pierantozzi, vice-president and health minister of the Pacific island state of Palau which has a population of only 20,000, said the pact "will give my little country the means to fight the devastation we have seen from tobacco".

But US-based anti-smoking campaigning group Infact warned that "giant tobacco corporations are continuing their aggressive efforts to derail the swift implementation" of the treaty .

The Maori Smokefree Coalition welcomed New Zealand signing the treaty.

"The FCTC is the first-ever global health treaty," coalition director Shane Bradbrook said in a statement.

"It is a major step forward in the worldwide battle against the death and disease caused by the tobacco epidemic. It provides the basic tools for countries to enact comprehensive tobacco control legislation and take on the powerful tobacco industry," he said.

"We highly commend the New Zealand Government for signing this historic treaty."

The WHO estimates that about 4.9 million people die each year from tobacco use. If current trends continue, this figure will reach about 10 million per year by 2030, with 70 per cent of those deaths occurring in developing countries.

While the measures in the FCTC represent a minimum set of tobacco control policies, the treaty explicitly encourages countries to go above and beyond these measures.

Strong action on the part of countries will give them the opportunity to reduce the human suffering caused by tobacco and curb runaway costs of health care.

The treaty also provides nations with a guide for enacting strong, science-based policies in other areas such as second-hand smoke protections, tobacco taxation, tobacco product regulation, combating cigarette smuggling, public education, and tobacco cessation treatment.

- NZPA