Senators Ask That Decisions to Include Tobacco in Tariff Reductions be Reconsidered as Part of Trade Agreement
Senators support proposal to safe guard tobacco regulations and protect public health
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tom Harkin (D-IA), and John Kerry (D-MA) today wrote to United States Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk to express their strong support of the USTR’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement Tobacco Proposal, but also urged the USTR to reconsider the decision not to exclude tobacco products from future tariff reductions. As the TPP Agreement is being negotiated, the Obama Administration has drafted a Tobacco Proposal to guide negotiations which would create a safe harbor for health authorities in TPP member countries to adopt tobacco control regulations and ensure the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to fully implement the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009. The proposal does not currently include an exemption for tobacco products from any elimination or phasing down of tariffs that might be included in the agreement.
“We are writing to express our strong support for the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement Tobacco Proposal and to urge you to table this bold initiative. The Proposal recognizes the unique harm posed by tobacco products and would create a safe harbor for health authorities in TPP member countries to adopt tobacco control regulations designed to safeguard the public’s health,” the Senators wrote. “We urge you to reconsider the decision not to exclude tobacco products from tariff reductions as part of the Proposal.”
Every year, 443,000 people are killed as a result of tobacco use in the United States alone. Accordingly, the TPP Agreement Tobacco Proposal explicitly recognizes the unique health and regulatory status of tobacco products. The proposal includes a safe harbor provision that would allow health authorities in TPP countries to adopt regulations that impose origin-neutral, science-based restrictions on specific tobacco products – such as those in the Tobacco Control Act – in order to safeguard public health. In today’s letter, the Senators asked that USTR make clear that this provision is applied to both statutory and regulatory tobacco control measures that meet the origin-neutral and science-based criteria.
The TPP Agreement is currently being negotiated by nine countries—Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States. USTR hopes to complete these negotiations by the end of the year, at which point the TPP Agreement will be voted on by Congress.
[The Senators’ letter to Ambassador Kirk is copied below]
June 7, 2012
The Honorable Ron Kirk
United States Trade Representative
600 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20508
Dear Ambassador Kirk,
We are writing to express our strong support for the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement Tobacco Proposal and to urge you to table this bold initiative. The Proposal recognizes the unique harm posed by tobacco products and would create a safe harbor for health authorities in TPP member countries to adopt tobacco control regulations designed to safeguard the public’s health. While we would prefer an exclusion for all tobacco products from the TPP Agreement currently being negotiated by the United States with eight other countries, we welcome the Proposal as a critical step to safeguard the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) ability to implement the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 and protect the public’s health.
Every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), tobacco use kills 443,000 Americans, most of whom started using tobacco as teenagers. A recent report by the World Lung Foundation found that tobacco has killed 50 million people worldwide in the last 10 years. If this trend continues, by the end of this century one billion people will die from tobacco – that is equivalent to one person every six seconds. The magnitude of the tobacco epidemic makes it entirely appropriate to distinguish tobacco products from a health and regulatory perspective.
In 2009, Congress gave FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products when it passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The FDA has already implemented provisions of the law that ban flavored cigarettes, with candy-like flavorings such as strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate, and prohibit the advertising or labeling of tobacco products with terms like “light,” “mild,” or “low.” The Tobacco Control Act also requires cigarette manufacturers to include new graphic warning labels depicting the negative health consequences of smoking. A U.S. District Court ruled the FDA’s graphic warning labels on cigarettes packages unconstitutional, but on March 5, 2012, the federal government filed an appeal. Once fully implemented, the Tobacco Control Act will help to deter people, including many young people, from smoking and will help to prevent the next generation from picking up this dangerous and often deadly addiction.
We commend the Administration for including a broad safe harbor for public health authorities in all nine TPP countries to adopt regulations that impose origin-neutral, science-based restriction on tobacco products to safeguard public health. This language would help to ensure that FDA is able to implement the Tobacco Control Act and reduce the use of tobacco by children and youth.
We urge you to reconsider the decision not to exclude tobacco products from tariff reductions as part of the Proposal. This element of the Proposal is contrary to the intent of the “Doggett Amendment” and the Clinton Administration’s Executive Order 13191 on Federal Leadership on Global Tobacco Control and Prevention, both of which prohibit the U.S. government from promoting the sale or export of tobacco products.
Additionally, we urge you to make it clear in the tabled Proposal that statutory as well as regulatory tobacco control measures that meet the origin-neutral and science-based criteria would be exempt. It is essential to safeguard countries’ sovereign authority to take the most appropriate action to protect the health of their citizens.
The USTR’s Tobacco Proposal reflects that Administration’s strong commitment to tobacco control efforts domestically and abroad. The Proposal will safeguard the implementation of the Tobacco Control Act and ensure our TPP partners can pursue tobacco control initiatives. We urge you to table the Proposal and look forward to working with you to strengthen the initiative as it moves ahead in the TPP negotiations.