Durban — The World Health Organisation said it was concerned with continued attempts by the Tobacco industry and their surrogates to further its interests to influence scientific research, public perception, policy making and the media to ensure proliferation and sale of nicotine and tobacco products.
In a statement WHO said the tobacco industry should not be a partner in any initiative linked to setting or implementing public health policies, knowing that its interests are in direct conflict with the goals of public health.
“There is a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests. WHO urges all Member States to ensure that they are not partnering with or accepting funds from the industry or its front groups,” explained WHO.
Furthermore, the international community must not forget that the tobacco industry knowingly denied its products were linked with cancer and falsely claimed there was no harm from second-hand smoke.
Who claims that the misleading conduct continues today with tobacco, e-cigarette, and other nicotine companies concealing the addictive nature of their products, while directly targeting children and young adults with advertisements for their harmful products.
“The tobacco industry has no place in tobacco control or harm reduction policy. Decades of duplicitous behaviour serve as proof that tobacco companies put profit before public health.” said WHO.
Moreover, the organisation said the tobacco industry uses an array of tactics to interfere with the setting and implementing of tobacco control measures. They said one strategy is undermining the credibility of WHO and partners so that the public calls into question scientific evidence that proves the harm of tobacco and nicotine products.
The organisation added that WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) uses evidence-based approaches that have helped save millions of lives. WHO and its tobacco control partners said they continued to uphold the adoption of evidence-based policies to curb tobacco use like Mpower measures.
These are measures intended to assist in the country level implementation of effective interventions to reduce the demand for tobacco. They further said the measures are to also support the full implementation of WHO FCTC, WHO’s work with global tobacco control partners has strengthened public health and has now protected over 5 billion people with tobacco control measures.
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