Handsel Art

PRESS RELEASE

Date: 28 August 2008

For Immediate Release

Contact: J.R. Few at

(870) 427-1365 or email

handselart@marioncounty.com

Human Rights and Tobacco

Earlier this month, the Arkansas Department of Health held a press conference reporting a significant decrease in Arkansas’ smoking rates. What went unreported was that the week before the Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Branch Chief Dr. Carolyn Dresler welcomed an international group in Lausanne, Switzerland to focus on the next step in challenging tobacco, as a threat to human rights.

The first things Arkansas legislators cut from the voter mandated Act 1 of 2000, distributing tobacco settlement funds, were the law school programs that trained young scholars to challenge the tobacco industry. In 2004 Josh Alpert, with Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, spoke at the University of Arkansas School of Law Tobacco Control Center’s last and only symposium, National Trends and Legal Aspects of Tobacco Prevention. Alpert told the audience in Fayetteville that the tobacco industry knew that legal challenges to the public health were merely a stalling tactic. The growth market for the tobacco cartel was overseas.

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a landmark United Nations document stating that all persons have “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.” Human rights recognize “rights holders” and “duty bearers.” States or governments have a duty to uphold the basic right to a healthy and safe environment and the knowledge on how to sustain it.

Primary to understanding tobacco prevention as a matter of human rights is that tobacco industry profit depends on traditionally under-privileged populations. 85% of tobacco is grown in developing countries, much of it by child labor. Within the next decade tobacco is expected to kill 10 million people annually, 70% of those in developing countries. More to the point is that the burden of tobacco addiction is borne by the most vulnerable: the uneducated, women, and children.

In parts of the developing world where many people live on only a few dollars a day, tobacco addiction can consume as much as 10% of a family’s income. Most smokers become addicted in their teens, long before they have a spouse or children. The burden of the cost of tobacco, related health issues, and premature death becomes a family’s inheritance.

“In Marion County smokers spend an estimated $2.5 million dollars annually on tobacco,” says Tobacco Free Marion County’s Julie Andersen. “How much of this income here could be diverted to school supplies, shoes, or clothing? Now imagine that in the third world the cost of tobacco addiction often deprives communities of food and simple survival.” Marion County’s adult smoking rate has fallen to 14% of the population. Smoking rates on the Pacific Rim are as high as 70%.

Co-hosting the Lausanne conference with Dr. Dresler was Harry Lando, PhD of the University of Minnesota and supported by local hosts, Pascal Bovet ,PhD and Jacques Cornuz, PhD from the University of Lausanne. The group has adopted for the future the title Human Rights and Tobacco Control Network.

A human rights based approach to tobacco prevention may be a new perspective, but is gaining momentum. Most importantly, it addresses the real harm and cost of transnational corporate tobacco predation and the responsibilities of government at all levels across the globe to protect their population.

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