US Policy: Global Warming = Global Smoking

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) brought us the Kyoto Protocol and its successor in-the-making, the Bali roadmap. But did you know there’s an equivalent United Nations Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC)? And a global tobacco treaty to boot?

Yep. And like the UNFCCC, the FCTC's aim is to reverse a deadly, human-induced pandemic that's hitting low-income countries the hardest: global smoking. The similarities between the two don't stop there.

Turns out Washington's formidable opposition to global treaties related to any kind of smoke is remarkably consistent. Have a look at this must-read from the Washingtonian. It takes us back to 2001 when the White House was negotiating its way out of a responsible global tobacco treaty. (It's worth mentioning that the event took place two months after President Bush withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol):

In May 2001, Dr. Thomas Novotny, assistant surgeon general of the United States, was in Geneva negotiating a global treaty on tobacco control when he got a late-night telephone call from Washington.

William Steiger, then an adviser to Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, ordered Novotny to abandon positions on international tobacco control that had been staked out by US negotiators during the Clinton administration.

Here's why:

“The message I got that night came straight from the White House,” Novotny says. “Steiger said we now had to ‘bracket’ language in the FCTC negotiations that we had previously supported, meaning we would not commit to it anymore. The US also reserved the right to opt out of our previously held positions such as support for mandatory cigarette taxes and clean-indoor-air policies as well as restrictions on cigarette advertising—strategies we know can reduce cigarette smoking.

“Other countries had looked to us for leadership because we had developed a number of successful antismoking strategies,” Novotny says. “Suddenly backing away from this and retreating on our earlier commitments was devastating to me and an embarrassment for the US, but Steiger wasn’t apologetic. He was an ideologue there to do the administration’s bidding.”

The demands Steiger related to Novotny had been spelled out in a 32-page memo prepared by Philip Morris and dated March 15, six weeks before Steiger’s late-night call. The world’s biggest multinational tobacco company, Philip Morris had sought changes to weaken the FCTC treaty. It asked that health warnings not “dominate” cigarette packages because they could “gratuitously infringe upon our trademarks.” The Bush administration went along with 10 of the 11 changes requested.

Does that mean big tobacco dictated the US position on an international treaty, the article asks? Sure looks that way.

And here's what we've got as a result:

An estimated 1.25 billion people smoke worldwide, more than ever before, according to the Tobacco Atlas, published by the American Cancer Society with support from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the International Union Against Cancer.

And this:

“We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg of tobacco’s devastating impact on low-income countries around the world that can least afford to deal with the rising incidence of lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and increased risk to pregnant women,” says Matthew Myers, president of the Washington-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

That's alarming. And familiar. For anyone observing the US on the world's climate stage over the years, this too might strike a chord: To date, 168 countries have signed the FCTC and more than 150 countries have ratified it. The US is not among them.

The parallels with the fated tobacco tale and the way the US has thwarted international climate negotiations are clear as day. Replace big tobacco with big oil and/or big coal, and they're one and the same. Just have a look at the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists called "Smoke, Mirrors and Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty about Climate Science" for the evidence.

Now take a look at how the tobacco tale ends:

The United States’ failure to ratify the FCTC means the US government no longer will have a place at the table in future FCTC negotiations or any say in the treaty’s implementation. A number of countries reportedly prefer this state of affairs because they’ve come to regard the United States as seeking to weaken the treaty.

Maybe the US will find its way back after the '09 inauguration, but until then, despite the spin, it's going to be a holding pattern on obstructive policies from the US with both the FCTC and the UNFCC.

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