Honourable Deputy Minister of Culture and Sports Lefteris Avgenakis,
Honourable Professor Theoklis Zaoutis, President of the Hellenic National Public Health,
Dear friends and colleagues,
I am honored to be addressing the European Network for Smoking and Tobacco Prevention (ENSP) European Conference on Tobacco Control for 2022.
The Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control could not be more appreciative of the work of ENSP, and of the wider civil society community. The resources you all bring to bear on the enormous public health, social and environmental challenge that tobacco represents are invaluable.
Civil society, and the nongovernmental organizations active within it, play a vital role in national and international tobacco control efforts, notably by supporting the implementation of the Convention and the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.
While governments are ultimately responsible for the adoption and enforcement of tobacco control legislation, NGOs play a key role in shaping and strengthening that process.
You not only bring your considerable energy and expertise to bear, you are often best placed to offer insights regarding conditions on the ground so vital to the drafting of effective policy and strategy. NGOs also play a key role in driving the research agenda, monitoring the tobacco industry – which in itself can be a full-time job - as well as in whistle-blowing, communications, support and advocacy.
Your contributions are very much valued, and the Parties to the Convention and the Protocol - and of course we in the Convention Secretariat - are committed to working with you.
Conferences such as this are an opportunity to do just that, as are the sessions of the governing bodies of the treaties, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention (the COP) and the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol (the MOP).
We are already preparing for COP10 and MOP3 which will take place in Panama in November 2023, thanks to the generous support of the Government of Panama. Both of these sessions which will have extensive agendas due to the deferral of discussions originally scheduled to be held at the last meetings of the COP and MOP. We are hopeful that the 2023 sessions will be in person, and I hope to see you all there contributing to the advancement of our shared goals.
For today’s conference, the Convention Secretariat has organized a session on tobacco and its harmful impact on the environment – an extremely important theme that was the focus of this year’s World No Tobacco Day.
The environmental impacts of tobacco range from tobacco cultivation - most often carried out in lower income countries, wasting soil that could be used for food crops, depleting their water resources and driving deforestation - to tobacco waste generation that clogs our streets and fouls our oceans.
Improperly discarded cigarette butts alone are a major environmental concern. The most discarded waste item worldwide, they account for 1.69 billion pounds – that’s almost 800 million kilograms! - of toxic trash each year. Cigarette filters – while useless in terms of reducing the damage caused by smoking - break down in moisture and sunlight releasing microplastics into the environment, along with chemicals and cancer-causing toxins.
While most people know that quitting smoking is essential for good health, few realize that quitting is critical for the environment as well.
This is a message that needs to be shouted from the rooftops, and indeed from the treetops (while we still have trees to do so), around the world.
There is much to celebrate in the European Region. A number of countries within it are considered global tobacco-control leaders, and their implementation of key measures of the WHO FCTC are often cited as examples of good practice.
Several countries have committed to freeing themselves not just from tobacco but from nicotine.
However, and notwithstanding these achievements and aspirations, the truth is that there has been a relatively slow decline in overall tobacco use in Europe. Indeed, at the current rate of decline, Europe is heading towards a 19% relative reduction in tobacco use between 2010 and 2025, well short of the 30% targeted.
Europe also continues to have one of the highest prevalence rates of tobacco use globally, albeit with significant regional variation. The age-standardized prevalence of current tobacco smoking among individuals aged 15 years and older varied from 5.9% to 40.3% across Member States in 2020. And it also has the highest rate of tobacco use among females, over six times the rates reported in the WHO African and Western Pacific Regions.
The rise in the uptake of novel nicotine and tobacco products is also a concern, especially among young people and is especially concerning because it is AMONG young people, with some countries reporting extremely high prevalence rates.
These trends have many drivers, including a pandemic that has slowed the implementation of the Convention in many countries, but salient among them the new and old strategies of the tobacco industry, among them the introduction of these novel products and taking advantage of the pandemic to fuel its “corporate social responsibility" narrative.
The most recent example of tobacco industry interference is the purchase of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Such acquisitions allow the tobacco industry to present a socially responsible image, while giving it another lever to try to influence public health policy, even as it continues to peddle its lethal products.
So, the list of challenges we face as a tobacco control community is considerable, but so are the tools at our disposal, including of course the WHO FCTC and the Protocol. And finally, there is also our underlying resolve and our commitment. I very much look forward to seeing those qualities on display in today’s conference.
Thank you.