World No Tobacco Day 2002
Tobacco free sports

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Reclaiming Health

Sports federations and sportspeople around the world know tobacco is incompatible with their values and their health. Athletes take pride in their strength, skills, and dedication and in their ability to act as positive role models for all of society. They want to put an end to tobacco's manipulation of sports.

Countries want to reclaim their right to protect public health. WHO's 191 Member States are negotiating a global public health treaty to bring down tobacco-related deaths. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) will mesh science and economics with legislation and regulation and in some cases, litigation. It will seek global and national solutions for problems such as global tobacco advertising or smuggling – issues that cut across national boundaries, cultures, age groups and socio-economic strata. In fact, the FCTC is a call for international scrutiny and responsibility that normally accompanies a freely available consumer product in the international marketplace.

Under pressure by this global call for an end to the deception and the resulting death, tobacco companies are unleashing yet another attempt to derail meaningful regulation of their corporate activity. In this round of recycled arguments, companies such as British American Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco now promise to enforce "International Tobacco Marketing Standards." They propose to enforce these standards voluntarily and to target advertising only at adult smokers. WHO says no country has succeeded in designing regulations – especially voluntary ones – that eliminate children's exposure to tobacco advertising while allowing advertising aimed only at adults who use tobacco. Self-regulation invariably fails because it was never meant to succeed – tobacco companies know this and now so does the rest of the world.