FCTC Article 5.3

Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) recommends measures to the Parties to protect their public health policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.

Guiding Principles

• Principle 1 - The tobacco industry produces and promotes a product that is addictive, cause disease and death and give rise to a range of social problems, including poverty. Thus, an incompatible conflict exists between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests.
• Principle 2 - Countries should be accountable and transparent when they deal with the tobacco industry, or representatives of its interests.
• Principle 3 - Countries should require the tobacco industry or its representatives to operate in a manner that is accountable and transparent.
• Principle 4 - Tobacco industry should not be granted incentives to establish or sustain their businesses as their products are lethal.

Implementation Guidelines

Below guidelines, published to facilitate the implementation of Article 5.3, are applicable to:

• government officials,
• representatives and employees of any national, state, provincial, municipal, local or other public or semi/quasi-public institution or body within the jurisdiction of a country,

Or

• to any person acting on their behalf

Article 5.3 also state that any government branch (executive, legislative and judiciary) responsible for setting and implementing tobacco control policies and for protecting those policies against tobacco industry interests should be accountable for implementation of its implementation.

• Raise awareness about the addictive and harmful nature of tobacco products

Parties should inform and educate all branches of government and the public about

• The addictive and harmful nature of tobacco products,
• The need to protect public health policies for tobacco control from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry and
• The strategies and tactics used by the tobacco industry to interfere with the tobacco control activities.

• Parties should limit interactions with the tobacco industry and ensure the transparency of those interactions

Governments should interact with the tobacco industry only when its strictly necessary

• Parties should reject partnerships and agreements with the tobacco industry

Governments should not

• Accept, partnerships and non-binding or non-enforceable agreements as well as any voluntary arrangement with the tobacco industry
• Support the tobacco industry organizing, promoting or participating youth, public education or any initiatives that are directly or indirectly related to tobacco control

• Parties should prevent tobacco-related conflicts of interest for government bodies, officials, and employees

Governments should adopt a policy on the disclosure and management of conflicts of interest that applies to all persons involved in setting and implementing public health policies with respect to tobacco control

• Governments should require that the information provided by the tobacco industry is transparent and accurate.
• Governments should denormalize and regulate purported “socially responsible” activities carried out by the tobacco industry, including but now limited to activities described as "corporate social responsibility"
• The government should not give any preferential treatment to the tobacco industry.
• The State-owned tobacco industries should be treated in the same way as any other tobacco industry.

Advantages

The purpose of these guidelines is to ensure that efforts to protect tobacco control from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.==

Implementation

To ensure the implementation of tobacco control policies, monitoring the implementation of Article 5.3 of the Convention in essential. This also involves tobacco industry monitoring. With the guidance of WHO, FCTC, tobacco observatories were established all over the world. Brazil is the first observatory and Sri Lanka the second in the world. Nongovernmental organizations and other members of civil society not affiliated with the tobacco industry could play an essential role in monitoring the activities of the tobacco industry.

Implementation - Sri Lanka

The tobacco observatory of Sri Lanka, Centre for Combating Tobacco (CCT) was initiated in 2016. Established at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, as of 2017, it is the only tobacco observatory in the WHO South East Asia Region.