The Conference Blog

Highlights of the FCTC COP2

The second session of the Conference of Parties to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC COP2), Bankok, ended Friday 6 July 2007 after a week long series of negotiations and decision making regarding the implementation of the treaty.

In sum, the Conference of the Parties decided to:

All the articles published in the Alliance Bulletins during COP2

Since the pdf format does not allow you to see right away the content of each bulletin we thought it could be useful to provide you with a list of all the articles published in each Alliance Bulletin during COP2.
You'll also find links to the ones that have been published on this blog.

Tobacco pack warnings Vietnam has yet to get it right!

Sounds Familiar??

Vietnam Tobacco Industry’s (VINATABA) reasons why Vietnam cannot have picture-based pack warnings.

Excerpts from VINATABA’s presentation at the Workshop on Development of New Health Warnings, July 3, 2006

• Most countries in the world are using text-only health warnings, not pictorial ones. We are a poor developing country with outdated production technology and uncontrollable cigarette smuggling.

• Printing pictorial health warnings will be costly for the tobacco industry.

Packaging galore in Malaysia

It just took one clause in Malaysia’s Control of Tobacco Product Regulations 2004 (CTPR 2004) to start a nightmare for tobacco control advocacy.

That clause explicitly stated that restrictions on advertising “shall not apply to any tobacco product advertisement in or on a packing containing a tobacco product.”

Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco love Thais more than Filipinos

Thais have long been accustomed to seeing graphic health warnings on cigarette packs sold in their country.

What many may not realize is that Marlboro and Mild Seven packs sold in Thailand are made in the Philippines by Philip Morris International (PMI) and JT International (JTI) licensee Fortune Tobacco.

L’industrie du tabac aura de beaux jours au Sénégal si…..

À une époque pas si lointaine que ça, le Sénégal était une référence en matière de lutte antitabac.
Sa loi du 09 novembre 1981 interdisait la publicité en faveur du tabac et son usage dans certains lieux publics.

Mais devant la pression des multi- nationales de tabac et des patrons de presse pour qui cette interdiction constituait un manque à gagner énorme, la loi de 1981 a été remplacée en février 1985 par une nouvelle loi qui se limite à interdire la publicité du tabac à la télévision.

Recrudescence de la publicité sur le tabac au Cameroun

A la faveur de la reprise des activités du cigarettier SITABAC, on assiste actuellement au Cameroun à la recrudescence de la publicité sur le tabac.
Vendue à l'unité, en violation des conventions internationales, la nouvelle cigarette de marque « Classic » ne coûte que 10 FCFA (= moins de 0,02 €), ce qui en fait le produit le moins cher sur le marché camerounais.
À titre de comparaison, la banane est vendue à l'unité au prix de 25 FCFA.

More articles from the Alliance Bulletins

During the conference we were only able to publish a few articles from the Alliance Bulletin: everybody was too busy to work out a blog format version.
As we are able to obtain texts we'll publish them, like the two articles in spanish about Mexico and Panama that Beatriz transmitted to us: muchas gracias :)

México cancela total y definitivamente su acuerdo con la industria tabacalera

En su intervención frente a la Conferencia de las Partes, el delegado de México Dr. Eduardo Jaramillo informó que el nuevo gobierno (2006-2012) ha procedido a cancelar, en todos sus términos y de manera definitiva e irrevocable, el acuerdo que se había suscrito con la industria tabacalera en 2004 durante la administración anterior.

Con una de cal y otra de arena, avanza Panamá en la implementación del CMCT

Panamá avanza con aciertos y desaciertos en la implementación del CMCT.

Se estima que, entre los años 2000 y 2005, han muerto cerca de 2000 personas por año, o 16% de las muertes totales, debido a causas asociadas al consumo de tabaco. Pero a casi tres años de su ratificación recién se logró el 27 de junio de 2007 la aprobación unánime en primer debate de la Asamblea de Diputados del proyecto de Ley N° 25 de 2004.