Geneva, 2 APR ( EFE).- the States will have for the first time with instruments to control tobacco supply chain, from its point of origin until the sale, as they agreed the negotiators with the first international rules to curb illicit trade in tobacco.
representatives from 147 countries are collected from the last week in Geneva to close outstanding items of what will be the International Protocol on the illegal trade of tobacco, in a negotiation is virtually in its final stage and that could lead to the adoption of a final text on Wednesday.
This Protocol will become the first practical and binding tool of the framework Convention against tobacco, in force since 2005 and which focuses on the impact of smoking on the health of smokers and non-smokers.
For the time being, the most important decision has been related to the control of the supply chain, for which countries have been equipped with instruments for monitoring and location of the necessary inputs for the manufacture of cigarettes.
Aims to trace route of cigarette from its origin in a country until its commercialization in another, reducing the possibilities of diversion of the shipment and determining clearly the responsibility lies with the companies.
Yul Francisco Dorado, director for Latin America of Corporate Accountability International, an NGO active since more than 20 years in the fight against smoking, was pleased by this development because “the system of monitoring and location will be defined by Governments, as well as the control of information and technology”.
For the activist, this Protocol “will change the way in which the giants of the industry of tobacco and Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco operate globally”.
Once the new regulation enters into force, tobacco companies will have more precise responsibilities and non-compliance will lead to sanctions administrative, economic and, eventually, criminal, he said.
Dorado also featured the introduction of the “prior license procedure”, which implies that anyone may not install a point of distribution and sale of cigarettes, as it is currently the case in the majority of countries.
The Protocol will establish a license issued by the Government will be required to make this economic activity, for which the interested party will have to pay for permission and accredit that has no police or judicial history.
For the representative of Corporate Accountability International, another of the great contributions of the Protocol will be to decline the inequalities between developed countries and developing in the fight against tobacco.
“controls in developed countries tend to be more stringent that in developing countries, accentuating the tendency to displace the latter the illicit trade of tobacco,” explained. EFE
