Tobacco Control in Colombia: experience and challenges in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

It is a privilege to join you today for this important event, along with colleagues from the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, United Nations Development Programme, the Pan American Health Organization, academia and civil society, to review Colombia’s advances and achievements in tobacco control – particularly over the last few years during which support was provided through the FCTC 2030 project. 

 For the same reason, in 2003, WHO Member States unanimously adopted the Framework Convention, the implementation of which is also expressly listed as one of targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.

To provide a brief overview, FCTC 2030 was launched in 2016 with the objective of supporting countries eligible to receive official development assistance to further their progress implementing the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

 The implementation of the project was made possible thanks to the generous contributions of the Government of the United Kingdom, joined afterwards by the governments of Australia and Norway, as donors, and to whom I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude as their support has resulted in important achievements for many countries.

Under the leadership of the Convention Secretariat, the project wasimplemented in coordination with UNDP, WHO, PAHO and other partners (to whom I would also like to extend my gratitude for their support).

After close to six years of support to Phase 1 countries (as is the case of Colombia) – and after seeing the achievements made – the Convention Secretariat now needs to make the limited resources of the FCTC 2030 available to other ODA-eligible countries. 

It has been very encouraging to see the leadership of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection in the implementation of the project, and its commitment to further implementation of the WHO FCTC in the future; Colombia’s new Ten-Year Public Health Plan, as well as the National Development Plan 2022–2026 will be fundamental tools in achieving this objective.

Over the years, Colombia has achieved reductions in tobacco use prevalence thanks to the adoption of key policies, including: policies to make work and public places smoke free, a total ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, significant increases in tobacco taxation and the inclusion of pictorial health warnings on tobacco packaging. 

During the project, Colombia worked to ensure the sustainability of these political achievements, for example by establishing and strenghtening a high-level intersectoral coordinating mechanism on tobacco control and by implementing practical measures to monitor and strengthen the implementation of tobacco control policies. I believe these to be structural tools that can contribute to ensuring the sustainability of tobacco control in Colombia.   

These policy advancements have also been accompanied by efforts to strengthen the infrastructure to support tobacco users to quit smoking, while new documents have been developed to support the establishment of evidence-based policies. 

And despite the extreme difficulties over the last two years posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Colombia was able to continue to concurrently address the tobacco epidemic. 

As countries work to recover from COVID-19, tobacco control has a vital role to play in the build-back-better processes as we strive to build healthier, more resilient societies and sustainable economies; as expressly recognized by the Parties in a declaration adopted during the 9^th Session of the Conference of the Parties or COP, as we refer to it.

Effective tobacco tax policies, for example, not only contribute to reducing the demand for tobacco products, but are also an important means of generating revenue for the government, as stated in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.

This is clearly noted in the WHO FCTC Investment Case – Caso a favor de la inversión para el control de tabaco en Colombia – which illustrates the positive economic impact of stronger tobacco control interventions and provides objective economic evidence to policy-makers.

Ladies and gentlemen, I now need  to point out the biggest obstacle to the furthering of tobacco control efforts: the tobacco industry. 

This industry has a single overarching objective: generating maximum profits for its shareholders, which requires recruiting new addicts to its products: children and young people; and protecting its interests by cultivating relationships with governments and seeking to interfere with the development of policies that would impact it.

For this reason Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC on preventing tobacco industry interference in public policy-making needs to be robustly implemented by all Parties and all sectors in government, as we have seen, tobacco is a multidimensional problem and many actors are involved in addressing it. 

A particular challenge for all countries is the aggressive marketing of novel tobacco and nicotine products, such as heated tobacco products and e-cigarettes. 

Parties to the WHO FCTC have clearly stated, during the 8^th Session of the COP, that novel tobacco products must be regulated for what they are: tobacco products to which the full complement of measures under the Convention applies.

And for e-cigarettes, Parties have deliberated, during previous sessions of the COP, that these products need to be either entirely banned or robustly regulated, to protect public health in general and young people and vulnerable groups in particular. 

I wish to call on decision-makers in Colombia to work to protect the hard-won advances already achieved in tobacco control and public health.

Some of the important measures to be considered include: further increase tobacco taxes to reduce the affordability of tobacco products, increase the size of pictorial health warnings and consider the benefits of requiring plain packaging for tobacco products.