Tobacco treaty talks open amid fears and hopes

A new round of negotiations on an international tobacco-control treaty opened today amid fears by health campaigners that it will be too weak to prevent cigarette-related deaths rising to 10 million a year by 2030.

’’The tobacco convention is in danger of serious and irreversible failure,’’ said Clive Bates, director of Action and Smoking on Health.

ASH and other anti-smoking groups said that a draft treaty to be discussed at the week long meeting was milder than expected.

They voiced fears that it might be watered down further, including by President George W Bush’s administration, which critics perceive as having links with Big Tobacco.

However, World Health Organisation Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland said the WHO-sponsored treaty which is meant to enter into force by 2003 was proceeding according to plan.

’’Beyond the concern and the rhetoric, beyond the anger and the anguish, it is our ability to secure a set of global rules to control tobacco that will bear testimony to our conviction,’’ Brundtland told the opening session in Geneva.

’’With one life lost to tobacco every eight seconds, time is not on our side.’’

The text under discussion was drawn up by Celso Amorim, a Brazilian diplomat who chaired last October’s first round of talks.

It would commit governments to ban ‘‘all forms of direct and indirect tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship targeted at persons under the age of 18,’’ and to severely curb other advertising.

To the dismay of anti-smoking campaigners, it stops short of an outright ban on advertising, which has long been a WHO priority.

The draft text also contains provisions to combat smuggling, phase out duty free sales, increase taxes and control labels like ‘‘low tar’’ or ’’mild,’’ which are criticized for giving smokers a false sense of comfort.

But it indicates that trade agreements should be given equal priority with health concerns, a clause which has upset the activists.

Amorim has said his proposals represent a ‘‘compromise’’ between the differing national viewpoints.

WHO estimates that smoking kills more than four million people per year and predicts the toll may rise to 10 million per year by 2030 because of surging tobacco use in developing countries.