Editorial: Big Tobacco Bullies

With ever more Americans and Europeans giving up smoking, tobacco companies have increasingly focused on developing countries as markets for their addictive and deadly products. Now, as some of those nations try to regulate cigarettes by, for example, requiring warning labels, Big Tobacco is using trade and investment agreements to challenge and intimidate them.

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Tobacco companies have sued and threatened to sue countries like Uruguay and Uganda, arguing that their tobacco rules unfairly restrict trade or hurt their investments, according to a report in The Times by Sabrina Tavernise. Namibia has not enforced tobacco regulations because it is not prepared to fight long and expensive legal battles against large companies.

Trade agreements and investment treaties, which govern how governments treat foreigners that invest in their countries, are meant to make it easier to do business internationally. But they should not serve as means by which corporations undermine legitimate public health regulations. Smoking-related illnesses kill nearly six million people a year across the planet, according to the World Health Organization. Moreover, the W.H.O. reports that close to 80 percent of the world's smokers live in low- and middle-income countries.

It is not surprising that tobacco companies would use international trade and investment agreements to challenge health rules given their historic opposition to regulations. That is why it's imperative that trade officials make clear in treaties that countries cannot be challenged when they are trying to protect their citizens. The United States is negotiating a trade agreement with 11 Pacific Rim countries right now. American officials have said they plan to include language in that pact, which could be finalized next year, to protect those nations from legal challenges by tobacco companies. Those safeguards must be ironclad and should include provisions to penalize companies that bring frivolous and harassing lawsuits. Governments around the world should add similar provisions to existing trade and investment agreements to stop the tobacco industry's bullying of sovereign governments.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Editorial: Big Tobacco Bullies

Dengan url

http://opinimasyarakota.blogspot.com/2013/12/editorial-big-tobacco-bullies.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Editorial: Big Tobacco Bullies

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Editorial: Big Tobacco Bullies

sebagai sumbernya