A political case is about to shake up the fight against tobacco consumption, which according to the World Health Organization (WHO) represents the second cause of death in the world and the leading cause of preventable death. In Italy alone, smoking costs the lives of 83 people a year. A fact that makes collaboration with governments and institutions necessary, also considering that in almost all countries of the world (in all those of the western world) the sale of tobacco is a state monopoly.
The WHO itself has instead decided that the seventh edition of the Conference of the Parties (COP VII), scheduled for November 7-12 in New Delhi and organized to monitor the state of implementation of the Convention and above all to promote regulatory and fiscal actions aimed at reducing tobacco consumption, will not see the participation of the usual 170 representatives of countries from all over the world. This year, according to an article published by the Huffington Post UK which is causing a lot of discussion, there will be much fewer: to be excluded, according to the indications of the United Nations (of which the WHO is an internal organization), they should be all those government representatives who have interactions with the tobacco industry, and therefore also the Italian ministers and theoretically Prime Minister Matteo Renzi himself.
WHO is lobbying tremendously for exclude all public entities that legislate on tobacco: to be clear, in Italy, they would be affected by this reasoning and therefore virtually excluded Pier Carlo Padoan (Economics, as a monopoly), Maurizio Martina (Agriculture, for the supply chain, also because Italy is the first tobacco producer in Europe and the 14th worldwide), Carlo Calenda (Economic Development, for regulatory and fiscal reforms) and Beatrice Lorenzin herself, Minister of Health.
The reason for this choice, which will certainly ignite the debate at international level, is - again according to the news reported by the British online newspaper - an interpretation of Article 5.3 of the same Convention which establishes that "the interactions between institutions and the tobacco industry must be limited and take place in full transparency". However, it should be emphasized that the Art. 5.3, unlike other articles, is not considered binding on States that have acceded to the Convention.
A legitimate principle of transparency on paper, but which in this case seems decidedly taken to excess, and which risks transforming the New Delhi conference into an internal meeting of the World Health Organization, with the sole participation of NGOs, which however it will make binding decisions also for all those States that it is trying to exclude. Without leading to conspiracy theory, there is another unclear aspect of the story: the measures will certainly be taken in total secrecy, given that the WHO has also banned access to the media for years, as happened in Moscow in 2015 and during the last WHO meeting in Turkmenistan last April. Violations of the right to information that have led 50 journalists and publishers to write an "Open Letter to the United Nations against the gag of the media and the stifling of press freedom" to challenge the extraordinary measures often taken by the Organization to prevent journalists from do their job.
Returning to Italy, our country adhered to the WHO Conference on tobacco consumption in June 2003 and ratified it in July 2008. But, in addition to Italy, other important countries risk being excluded, such as the major tobacco producers (in that order China, India, Brazil, the United States, Indonesia and Malawi) to protect an industry which, beyond the majors, has 450.000 manufacturing companies worldwide and it employs 2,5 million people on plantations alone all over the planet.
