WHO Proposes New Rules For Upcoming Tobacco Conference

The public health agency of the United Nations wants to conduct an upcoming tobacco-control conference in India. The conference should free ties to the tobacco industry, leaders are proposing to get rid of any delegates representing the business interests of the tobacco industry like what happened last year.

In the previous years, Vietnam and China each sent a tobacco industry representative as part of their delegation to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Given the incident, WHO wants to change the ruling to disallow the industry representative to join the conference.

Reuters reported the official diplomatic communication last Oct. 17. The report comes from the WHO FCTC secretariat, in the report, it has been  stated that countries who will be represented by the tobacco industry will be escorted out. In behalf of the treat's leadership, it has been proposed that any business representative "would be requested to leave the premises" of the conference.

COP7: Pakistan to skip anti-tobacco conference in India next week https://t.co/kjpcPAcLQd via @wionews

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As follows, under the proposed rule, it could also cater the tobacco growers in smaller developing countries. The rule can defend small growers against the health authorities, especially UN. 

As for tobacco growers, Farmers can count on the state to buy their tobacco, but they earn much less from it than they would by selling other crops, and they often come under pressure from village officials to grow it in order to fill quotas that come from the Tobacco Corp.itself.

In line with this, it is still unclear if the FCTC will adopt the new rules in regards of the industry delegates. But, a government official from Vietnam said that on condition of anonymity that the industry would not send representatives as part of the country's 2016 delegation. China, however, still has no comment.