In May 2003, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) unanimously adopted the world's first health convention: the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Sweden ratified it in 2005. The Tobacco Convention is an international legally binding agreement that more than 180 countries have committed to following and working with. The convention, which contains 38 articles, aims to protect children and adults from harm and death from tobacco use. Many of the articles address measures that countries have agreed to take, including:
- Ensure that the prices of tobacco products are continuously increased.
- Make it more difficult for the tobacco industry to advertise its products. In the long term, tobacco marketing should be completely banned.
- Inform the population about the tobacco industry's methods of marketing and trying to influence countries' public health policies.
- Inform about the risks of tobacco.
- Determine what tobacco products may contain and what the packaging may look like.
- Help people who want to quit tobacco.
- Stop smuggling and other illegal trade in tobacco.
- Help tobacco farmers find other crops to grow.
- Prevent the sale of tobacco to children.
- Keep the tobacco industry out of public health policy.
- Cooperate with other countries.
FACTS
Tobacco control : What we commonly call tobacco prevention – legal regulation, supervision and other societal measures to reduce tobacco use and passive smoking.
Tobacco: In the tobacco convention, the term includes all kinds of tobacco, including those that are not smoked, such as snus.
An international convention is a legally binding agreement between countries.
A framework convention is a type of convention where the parties agree on a specific goal and a framework for the efforts and strategies to be implemented to achieve the goal.
Once a country has ratified the convention, it becomes a binding agreement, which means that its contents must be incorporated into its own legislation.
The tobacco control convention has shifted the focus from individual lifestyles to societal responsibility. It has clarified that tobacco is a health policy issue and not an individual moral issue. The tobacco control convention has also shone a merciless light on the tobacco industry's tactics to perpetuate tobacco use around the world.
No decision-maker can any longer treat tobacco-related ill health and mortality as effects of individual free choice. The tobacco issue is about politics, and legislation and other regulation are necessary in the public health work against tobacco.
How the implementation of the convention is developing can be followed through the parties' reporting to WHO. The parties report every two years.
