Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Benjamin Mason Meier, JD, LLM, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 100 Haven Ave., Apt. 30C, New York, NY 10032, 212-305-0047, bmm2102@columbia.edu and Donna R. Shelley, MD, MPH, Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, 722 West 168th Street, Rm 526, New York, NY 10032.

The harms of smoking are truly global in scope. With the dismantling of trade barriers permitting the burgeoning initiation of smoking in developing countries, the global death rate from tobacco is expected to increase exponentially, causing approximately one billion deaths throughout the twenty-first century. This research examines whether nations can act multilaterally, through international law, to repel tobacco and other global threats to public health. On May 21, 2003, the World Health Assembly adopted the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the first multilateral treaty focused on public health. Our research evaluates the efficacy of the FCTC, finding that the FCTC fails to place firm mandates on nations to address smoking cessation and harm reduction, thus neglecting the millions already addicted to nicotine. Addressing the needs of those addicted to nicotine requires a new framework for international public health regulation: the human right to health. We analyze the right to health embodied in the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, finding that a human right exists for cessation and harm reduction programs and laying out a hierarchy of resource- and culturally-dependent programs that states may develop in fulfilling the right to health. To establish the international mechanisms necessary to research and assess cessation and harm reduction products and programs, the results of this analysis suggest that states incorporate the right to health into a cessation and harm reduction protocol to the FCTC.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, the participant will be able to

• Evaluate the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control as a means to promote public health policy through international law.
• Apply the human right to health to tobacco cessation and harm reduction.
• Develop ways in which future protocols to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control can be employed in furthering cessation and harm reduction goals.

Keywords: Tobacco Policy, Human Rights

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation