Tobacco: Symbol of Corrupt Trade Policy

The deadly tobacco industry increasingly deploys trade charges intended to bludgeon countries from Uruguay to Australia into abandoning policies that keep kids from getting addicted, and help smokers quit, as well documented in today's NY Times.

The U.S. Trade Representative should fix this problem during negotiations on the proposed 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).  But stalemates in U.S. trade policy are perpetuating this obvious injustice.

Trade ministers derive priority status within governments based largely in outdated beliefs that they will magically conjure prosperity by conspiring in secret, allegedly to eliminate trade barriers such as tariffs and quotas which in fact have long go been substantially reduced.  The predominant business of agreements like the TPP is actually reducing "technical barriers" to trade - that is, democratically adopted laws and regulations that protect the public's health, environment, labor standards, and financial transactions.

In the secretive, rarified world of trade negotiations, even when public health succeeds in getting a proposal to the negotiating table on an issue like tobacco, it is subject to be traded away at any moment by a trade minister who views it primarily as a bargaining chip for deals on more important concerns, like sugar, cars, or financial derivatives.

The Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH) has systematically documented how tobacco industry trade challenges threaten public health's rights to implement tobacco control measures. Medical and public health leaders in the U.S. and worldwide have echoed the call to "carve out" tobacco from trade agreements.

Malaysia presented a carve-out proposal at TPP talks in August, The USTR has advanced two increasingly weak compromises. Legal analysis from Georgetown [R. Stumberg, Safeguards for Tobacco Control: Options for the TPPA.  America Journal of Law and Medicine, 39 (213); 382-441] has confirmed in irrefutable detail that compromises short of a "carve out" would be virtually ineffective.

Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death worldwide, claiming 6.3 million deaths a year, including 1,200 Americans daily, and draining almost $200 billion a year in U.S. health care costs and lost productivity. Tobacco is barely a blip in the U.S. economy, and less than a fraction of a percent of our exports.

But the tobacco industry has made it clear that it will oppose any restriction on its rights to continue to appropriate trade rules. They've bought a box seat to the hermetically sealed, secretive trade negotiations, and the solid complicity of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Public health has no such advantages.  Interestingly, though, we have the truth.  And in this possibly unusual case, the truth is increasingly difficult to ignore.

The House's Budget Bill is a Bully's Snigger

We've had our children, or not. But we remember.
Worried when we were "late." Escaped to New York or California or Mexico where it was legal, if we could, or found lay caregivers through Jane. Mourned our friends, or relatives, or patients, who were not so lucky. The girls who had to quit school; their boyfriends who never did.

We remember when domestic violence didn't have a name. We know that too many still cower in the face of it. We remember when women couldn't get jobs as reporters. We cringe that they are still blamed by some when they are raped on the job.

We fought on the job for decent pay and union rights, and at home for equality and respect. We're so proud of the lives we've created and equally proud of the generations of women and men who are asserting their places in the world.

We're not surprised that Republicans with no solutions for an ailing global economy are going after the rights of individuals to make our own reproductive choices, the rights of workers to a voice on the job, the rights of all of us to public health and health care. We have been startled at how quickly the Democrats will throw us under the bus.

The House's budget bill, HR 1, and the companion HR 3, are the equivalent of a bully's snigger. Their plans to cut health care services including family planning would force more unintended pregnancies on the most vulnerable women. And then deny access to abortions. They have come to push us around and take our money for their own binges, while bellowing about freedom and fiscal responsibility.


So, we need to find each other again, link up as allies, to renew our vision and our voices, to rebuild our power.

The Trust Women/Silver Ribbon Campaign will wear our silver ribbons for reproductive health, rights and justice (www.oursilverribbon.org) at the Walks for Choices this Saturday, Feb. 26 at noon. There's one near you: http://walkforchoice.tumblr.com/


Let's get this party started.