May 20, 2013, ASH’s Chris Bostic testified about tobacco, urging the U.S. to exclude it from the treaty.

The text of his verbal comments is below.

To read ASH’s written comments, click here.

I am here today to urge the United States government to exempt tobacco products from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, in order to retain policy space for all TTIP partners to address this most destructive cause of preventable disease. This is not an anti-trade message, but the goals and benefits of trade are not compatible with tobacco. Trade has the potential to improve lives, while tobacco devastates lives, providing no benefit whatsoever to its addicted consumers. Let me quickly lay out the arguments for a full exemption.

First, tobacco is the world’s leading killer. Nearly 6 million people die every year, and that number is rising. By the end of the century, we risk a billion premature deaths, ten times the toll of the 20^th century.

Second, there is a global consensus on how to deal with the tobacco epidemic, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The U.S. has signed this treaty, and every member state of the European Union, as well as the European Commission, has ratified it.

Third, the tobacco industry has consistently abused international trade and investment rules to stall, block or roll-back implementation of the tobacco treaty. Trade is the strongest arrow in their litigation quiver, and TTIP as it is currently envisioned is a dream come true for an industry that kills half of its customers.

Fourth, while health exceptions are built in to many trade systems, those systems did not envision an industry that would use trade rules to create legal chill. It is clear from past trade and investment disputes that the tobacco industry need not win trade disputes to achieve their goal. The cost of litigation is a barrier unto itself, and many small governments simply cannot afford to win these disputes. We already have examples of countries that have delayed or discarded plans to advance tobacco control legislation due to the threat of trade litigation.

Fifth, the incompatibility of trade liberalization and tobacco is already recognized under U.S. law. The Doggett and Durbin Amendments, as well as Presidential Executive Order 13913, prohibit federal agencies from promoting the sale or export of tobacco products. These laws have been ignored in recent trade negotiations.

Sixth, the U.S. has joined the world on a path to addressing the growing problem of non-communicable diseases, or NCDs. The leading risk factor for NCDs is tobacco use, and the UN Political Declaration on NCDs, which the U.S. joined, calls for accelerated implementation of the tobacco treaty. By giving the tobacco industry new tools to block meaningful tobacco regulation, the U.S. undermines the NCD initiative and reneges on its promises.

Seventh, the slippery slope argument is a red herring. The tobacco exception that the U.S. has drafted – but not tabled – for the Trans-Pacific Partnership recognizes the uniqueness of tobacco in international trade.

Finally, half measures or weak exceptions will not address the core problem. Complicated legal tests and chapter exclusions invite litigation and increase legal chill. The easiest and most elegant solution is a blanket exclusion for tobacco products.

Tobacco use is responsible for nearly 6 million deaths per year, and is on track to kill one billion people this century. Governments responded in 2004 by adopting the world’s first public health treaty, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The FCTC has been rapidly embraced, and includes 175 countries, including all but one of the TPP negotiating countries. Tobacco plain packaging and graphic warnings, point of sale bans and bans on flavored cigarettes, interventions found in the FCTC and its guidelines, have been subject to several high profile trade disputes initiated by tobacco industry interests in the past 3 years, causing serious concern in the public health community.

According to Mary Assunta, Senior Policy Advisor of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA): “Although ten of the eleven countries negotiating the TPP are Parties to the international tobacco treaty, most trade negotiators at the 15^th Round of the TPPA in Auckland have little awareness of their obligations under the FCTC nor of the tobacco industry’s tactics to undermine public health. It is almost like they are running on parallel tracks with opposite destinations – one to reduce tobacco and the other to increase trade of tobacco products.”

The FCTC Conference of the Parties was held a few weeks ago in Seoul, and Parties at that meeting voted to exclude the tobacco industry from attending the negotiations relating to the FCTC. Governments at that meeting rejected Interpol’s application for observer status to the COP on the ground that it had received funding from a tobacco company (Philip Morris). This same policy has driven many governments to reject so-called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from tobacco companies, and disallow it from interfering in policy development and implementation.

“In contrast to the FCTC policy to exclude the tobacco industry, the TPP seeks the input of the tobacco industry to promote free trade. This is not compatible with FCTC obligations,” according to Chris Bostic Deputy Director of Policy for Action on Smoking and Health, a U.S.-based anti-tobacco group.

Bostic, citing extensive legal research from the Harrison Institute, adds: “Trade negotiators have yet to officially recognise tobacco as a hazardous product. Tobacco is unlike any other consumer product. When used exactly as intended, it kills.”

Now into its 15^th Round, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam have been negotiating the proposed TPP agreement since March 2010. Canada and Mexico recently joined the talks, and other countries are expected to follow.

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]]> http://ash.org/free-trade-agreement-ignores-global-tobacco-epidemic/feed/ 0 http://ash.org/are-we-being-duped-by-our-government-on-trade-negotiations/ http://ash.org/are-we-being-duped-by-our-government-on-trade-negotiations/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:37:25 +0000 ash http://ash.org/?p=1917 ... Read the full article >]]> The 15^th negotiating round of the ongoing TransPacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement will end tomorrow in Auckland, New Zealand. This marks the fourth round that U.S. negotiators have failed to “table” (formally propose) a special exception protecting governments’ right to legislate on tobacco, which they promised back in May.

The public health community has not seen the text of the exception, because only big corporations are allowed to see the draft TPP text. But we’ve had it described to us at length. It was the result of painful negotiations among the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the White House, Health and Human Services, Congress, and Big Tobacco. As far as our experts can tell (not having seen it), it’s not great, but it would at least get the conversation about tobacco going amongst the TPP negotiators. There was a tacit agreement between the U.S. government and health groups that the latter would lay off criticizing (and even extolling the virtues of) the exception or the TPP in general in order to give the administration political cover to actually table the exception. So we waited. And waited. There were some hints that once the election was over, the political balancing would change and it would be tabled. It’s over, and it wasn’t.

Will it be tabled next time? USTR won’t say. When asked for a reason for the delay, they answer “We are still consulting on the text.” Which is a strange answer for two reasons. First, back in May USTR made a point of telling us that it was extremely difficult to agree on the text, and that a lot of political give and take was necessary. It took months. So how are revisions politically feasible? Second, who are they consulting with? They certainly haven’t been asking us for any input.

There are TPP negotiators from other countries who are keen to see the exception, and to see their tobacco regulations protected under the agreement. But in general, the U.S. holds most of the power in trade negotiations – smaller countries are reluctant to rock the boat, and so rather than propose something themselves, they would prefer to wait for the U.S. to start the conversation. We’ve been prepping them for 18 months on the tobacco issue, and they are ready to talk.

A trade expert pointed out recently that the U.S. tobacco proposal (as far as they could tell from not reading it) sounded a lot more like a reservation than an exception. Reservations are taken at the very end of negotiations, when most chapters have been closed. Is the U.S. simply going to protect its own tobacco measures at the last moment, and leave the other countries open to endless lawsuits from the tobacco industry? If so, was this the plan all along, or has the plan changed due to industry pressure? Either way, if the exception is never tabled, public health groups should be outraged at being lied to. And the administration should be ashamed. Their failure to act – and duplicitous treatment of constituents who largely supported it in the last election – will directly lead to millions of additional deaths.

President Obama, please do the right thing. There is no grey area here – the interests of Big Tobacco are directly opposed to the interests of public health. They are not a stakeholder, they are the vector of a disease that will kill one billion people this century.