WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

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The World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is a treaty adopted unanimously by the 56th World Health Assembly on May 21, 2003. It became the world's first international public health treaty when it came into force on February 27, 2005. The treaty has been signed by 168 countries and is legally binding in 124 ratifying countries representing 2.3 billion people. Notable non-signatories as of July 2006 are Russia and the United States of America. [1]

The treaty is sponsored by the World Health Organization's Tobacco Free Initiative, an organization dedicated to reducing the health effects of tobacco use. The Tobacco Free Initiative is part of the WHO Noncommunicable Disease and Mental Health Division based in Geneva, Switzerland.

The purpose of the treaty is to set broad limits on the production, sale, distribution, advertisement, taxation, and government policies towards tobacco.

The tobacco industry has sought to limit the influence of this treaty but with limited success. Most nations worldwide are finding that ever larger numbers of their citizens are either getting ill and dying of lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. Since national health systems in many nations pay for treatment of these diseases, there is a strong financial incentive for governments to control spending on health and thus discourage tobacco use.

[edit] Requirements

A partial list of requirements for signatory nations is that they are required to:

ban tobacco advertising, unless their constitutions forbid it;
force cigarette makers to increase the size of health warnings so they take up at least 30 percent of the package cover;
restrict or prohibit smoking in many types of public places, especially commercial establishments;

and encouraged to: