Accelerating Tobacco Control Towards a Tobacco- and Nicotine-Free Future

This constituency statement was delivered by Dr. Ulysses Dorotheo under Agenda Item 12 – Tobacco Control – at the Seventy-Seventh session of the WHO Regional Committee for the Western Pacific.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control came into force in 2005, providing evidence-based keys to freeing the world from tobacco and nicotine addiction. While progress has been made in the past two decades, tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of disease and death worldwide. In the Western Pacific Region, tobacco kills approximately 3 million people annually; that is 3 million too many.

The draft regional plan is a clarion call, reminding Member States of their commitments to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco use, nicotine addiction, and exposure to tobacco smoke. To achieve this objective, purposeful acceleration of tobacco control implementation and enforcement is both urgent and necessary.

The draft plan rightly identifies the need to prioritize best-buy tobacco control measures: taxation to make tobacco and non-medicinal nicotine products continually less affordable; comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship – including at points of sale and in digital and social media; 100% smoke-free environments; cessation interventions; and standardized tobacco packaging with large pictorial health warnings. In parallel, non-medicinal nicotine products should be regulated by prohibiting or restricting them, so as to avoid the same mistakes that allowed cigarettes to flourish into the pandemic we face today. Ministries of health must ensure a whole-of-government approach to tobacco control, including full implementation of Article 5.3 of the FCTC to protect public health policies from tobacco industry interference. Only with strong governance will tobacco control laws be unequivocally pro-health and sufficient human and financial resources be allocated to accelerate tobacco control progress.

Learning from history, we must remember that the tobacco industry is not a normal industry. It’s inherently harmful, deceptive, and fundamentally opposed to public health, sustaining addiction and protecting its profits by directly and indirectly undermining effective tobacco control implementation. Government agencies within and beyond the health sector must move away from “business as usual” that has allowed the industry to normalize and position itself as a legitimate stakeholder in tobacco regulation. Member States should also advance Article 19 of the FCTC by strengthening legal frameworks to hold the tobacco industry legally liable for the harms and costs it causes.

With this perspective, Member States can look beyond the global target of a 30% reduction in tobacco use and set their sights on achieving a tobacco- and nicotine-free future.

This is achievable, because seven years ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck unexpectedly, it brought fear and uncertainty about achieving a COVID-free future. But the world united to overcome a common enemy that forever changed the way we live, yet killed millions fewer people than the tobacco industry does every year. Member States can be inspired to be similarly determined to end the tobacco pandemic. Smallpox eradication and the phaseout of leaded fuel and CFCs are other global endgame examples.

We commend the Republic of Palau for its visionary leadership in requesting WHO to review nicotine with a view to regulating it as a psychotropic substance. We call on other Member States to support Palau’s forward-looking initiative and to consider implementing other forward-looking measures, even while working to fully implement the WHO FCTC. Such measures, already implemented in other jurisdictions, include banning all flavors and additives, reducing the number of tobacco retailers, birthdate-based sales bans (a.k.a. the Tobacco-Free Generation), and phasing out commercial sales of all products.

Nicotine is a poison that harms not only individuals but also society at large. We count on Member States to be courageous in committing to reduce youth nicotine initiation to the lowest possible, which is none at all.