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Support HEALTH not Tobacco: A Petition for United States Leadership

We are Americans who believe our nation should lead the fight for adoption of the strongest possible Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). This international tobacco control treaty, under the auspices of the World Health Organization, represents an essential tool in the fight to curtail tobacco sales and marketing that now claim the lives of 4 million people, including over 400,000 Americans, each year. We call upon President Bush to support the negotiation of a treaty that will ban all forms of tobacco advertising to the maximum extent permitted by national constitutions, stop smuggling of tobacco products, fully protect the public from exposure to secondhand smoke, prohibit tobacco industry deception about its products, and end the use of international trade agreements to promote tobacco sales. It is time to stop supporting treaty provisions that would only benefit the multinational tobacco companies. The United States should take the side of health over tobacco.

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As smoking rates decline in the United States and other western nations, the tobacco industry has aggressively targeted developing nations to find new customers for its deadly products. Multinational tobacco companies like Philip Morris have exploited the liberalization of trade and the globalization of marketing to enter new markets, and then exported their sophisticated lobbying and public relations operations to thwart tobacco control initiatives. To counter the industry’s efforts, the world’s nations are negotiating a tobacco control treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. United States leadership is critical to this effort, but to date the U.S. has sought to weaken key provisions of the treaty dealing with consumer protection, advertising, and measures that put public health ahead of trade.