We are asking heads of U.S. organizations interested in signing on to the letter to fax endorsement and contact information to 202-234-5176 or e-mail it (with "sign-on" in the subject line) to rob@Essential.ORG. (Organizations outside the United States may want to consider signing onto a statement from international tobacco control advocates on which this letter is based; it can be accessed at www.essential.org/action.) Individuals who would like to send the letter should do so directly.
Please feel free to distribute this as widely as possible.
President Bill Clinton
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Clinton:
We are writing to urge you to oppose the proposed tobacco settlement between the state attorneys generals and the tobacco industry.
While there are many problems with the proposed settlement, we believe that a major flaw that has not received enough attention is the complete lack of provisions to control the overseas operations of U.S. tobacco companies.
As horrible and monumental as is the death and disease caused in the United States by tobacco, the toll outside of the United States is much greater. Approximately 85 percent of the annual 3 million tobacco-related deaths occur outside of the United States. And, while smoking and tobacco use rates are relatively flat or declining in the United States, they are rising elsewhere, especially in developing countries. By the 2020s, the World Health Organization predicts 10 million people will die annually from tobacco related disease, 70 percent of those in developing nations.
In addition to the public health toll, tobacco production overseas has a devastating impact on the environment. For every acre of tobacco grown, an acre of timber is felled to cure it. Tobacco cultivation also exposes farmworkers and their communities to highly toxic pesticides.
Under pressure at home, the major U.S.-based tobacco companies are rapidly expanding their overseas operations, and now sell more cigarettes overseas than in the United States. In many countries, these companies are using slick and deceptive advertising and marketing techniques that target children, especially girls, in ways that would never be tolerated in the United States. This means that dealing with the international tobacco control problem cannot be an afterthought or a footnote in any U.S. effort to develop a comprehensive arrangement with the tobacco industry -- it must be a central element. That the tobacco companies do not want to put this issue on the table is surely not a reason to ignore it.
Tobacco control advocates in other countries view the proposed settlement with alarm. A U.S. tobacco settlement in the absence of global controls may actually exacerbate public health threats in the rest of the world. If sales fall in the United States, or if U.S. companies are forced to pay a substantial settlement award, they can be expected to intensify their expansion overseas. The settlement would shut off the flow of information that has helped strengthen other countries' tobacco control movements and would permit the industry to maintain its overblown claims of attorney-client privilege and various other kinds of privileges and protections.
Perhaps most importantly, the settlement sacrifices the international public health community's greatest leverage over the tobacco industry -- lawsuits in the U.S. tort system -- without providing any international benefits. Most other countries do not have legal systems that facilitate lawsuits such as those which finally brought Big Tobacco to the negotiating table. Even if governments or private parties are able to bring successful lawsuits against the U.S. tobacco companies, they are likely to find that the companies do not maintain sufficient assets in their countries to pay for the costs of the damage they have caused. If those governments or private parties try to collect damages in the United States, they may well find their ability to do so limited by the caps included in the settlement.
To avoid doing public health harm, any U.S. settlement must set a worldwide floor on the practices of U.S. tobacco companies, their subsidiaries and those firms over which they exercise de facto control (including trademark licensees), without limiting the ability of countries to require companies to exceed the global minimum standard. Specifically, a settlement should be structured to:
* Require all U.S. regulations to apply equally to cigarettes made in the United States for domestic consumption and for export;
* Require U.S. tobacco companies to agree to an international code of conduct embodying the regulatory provisions contained in a U.S. settlement in areas such as marketing to children, advertising and marketing, labeling and performance requirements for reduction of new children smokers. The industry must also immediately agree to end practices such as cigarette giveaways, television and radio advertising, sports, music and other similar sponsorships and clothing giveaways;
* Prohibit the tobacco companies from opposing efforts in other countries to adopt regulatory measures (for example, workplace restrictions on smoking and ingredient regulation) which are in line with World Health Organization recommendations;
* Require full public disclosure by the tobacco companies in every country of all political donations and political lobbying efforts;
* Ensure that there be no immunity or limits on liability granted to the tobacco companies for their exports, activities or investments abroad and that non-American victims be entitled to the same levels of compensation in U.S. courts as American victims;
* Require U.S. tobacco companies to offer to compensate foreign government health agencies, proportional to their market share (taking into account smuggled cigarettes) and reflecting the formula used to determine their payment to the states for Medicaid reimbursement; and
* Contain an explicit stipulation by the tobacco companies that they will not seek assistance from the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. embassies or other U.S. government agencies to resist or repeal other countries' tobacco control regulations and laws.
While the U.S. government must do everything in its power to stop the tobacco industry from addicting children in the United States, it must not do this at the expense of the rest of the world. With U.S.-based companies playing such a huge role in promoting tobacco consumption overseas, we have a special responsibility to ensure that any settlement sets an international minimum standard for tobacco control.
We ask for your pledge of opposition to any tobacco settlement that does not set a global floor on U.S. tobacco company practices and look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely yours,
Robert Weissman,
|co-director,
Essential Action
On behalf of:
Americans for Nonsmokers Rights
Jim Puckett, Executive
Director, Asia-Pacific Environmental Exchange
Judith Lennert, Boston Women's
Health Collective Inc.
Ahron Leichtman, Executive Director, Citizens for A
Tobacco-Free Coalition
City of Hope National Medical Center
Fred Goff,
President, The Data Center
Peter Bialick, President, GASP of Colorado (Group
to Alleviate Smoking
Pollution)
The Greater Cincinnati Coalition on
Smoking and Health
INFACT
Mark Ritchie, Executive Director, Institute for
Agriculture and Trade
Policy
Annuradha Mittal, Policy Director, Institute
for Food and Development
Policy
John Cavanagh, Co-Director, Institute for
Policy Studies
Inter-Hemispheric Education & Resource
Center
International Rivers Network
Friends of the Earth-U.S.
Medea
Benjamin, Executive Director, Global Exchange
Overseas Development
Network
Pesticide Action Network North America
Randy Hayes, Executive
Director, Rainforest Action Network
Rev. Robert A. Kinsey, Rocky Mountain
Conference, United Church of Christ
San Francisco Tobacco Free
Coalition
Smokefree Pennsylvania
Tobacco-Free Michigan Action
Coalition
Virginia GASP (Group to Alleviate Smoking Pollution)
Michael
Lippman, President,Washington DOC
Tammi Coles, Coordinator, Washington Peace
Center