WASHINGTON — Who'da thunk it? The world has agreed it has a common enemy and decided, in a unanimous vote, to try to defeat it.

After 200 years of tobacco's pleasure and addiction on a global scale, 192 countries voted this past week to say it's time to stop pushing the killer weed on unsuspecting future generations.

To the astonishment of many, including some inside the Bush administration, the United States dropped initial opposition to a treaty aimed at curbing the free-market activities of some of the biggest corporations in the world.

Tommy Thompson, head of the massive Department of Health and Human Services, was giddy at being given the word he could cast the U.S. vote for a treaty that basically shouts, "Enough already!"

It only took four years of behind-the-scenes scuffling and 5 million deaths a year, but the World Health Organization has just adopted a treaty — the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This is the first time the agency has passed a global treaty that says how all governments should deal with a public health menace.

At first, the United States and Germany had indicated opposition, that curbs on advertising of tobacco and marketing restrictions on cigarettes were unacceptable. But Thompson stunned delegates by saying the United States had changed its mind — tobacco is bad. And suddenly, there was a deal.

The news spread quickly. An elated Canadian cancer specialist was quoted as saying, "This treaty is an incredibly important achievement in efforts to control the worldwide tobacco epidemic."

The health minister of Mauritius predicted, "What we are doing today will be written in bold letters in world history. Generations to come will not only thank us, but a lot of them will owe their lives to us."

You will, of course, continue to see huddled masses yearning to breathe smoke standing in the rain outside of tall office buildings, banned by colleagues from smoking indoors. Children will continue to be preyed upon by evil merchants of death.

But the treaty, if ratified, is significant. Governments would have to ban tobacco promotion and advertising — or at least greatly restrict such advertising.

Health warnings would sprout on 30 percent of the surface of tobacco packages. Some packets would even have anti-smoking pictures, as those in Canada have.

There would be new efforts to stop tobacco-smuggling rings.

Secondhand smoke would be curtailed as workplaces adopt new anti-smoking regulations.

And each government would have to come up with a coordinated anti-smoking policy and submit it to an outside body called the Conference of the Parties.

Tobacco companies have gotten so huge that they have turned from peddling their nasty wares only to people who can afford them, to working to snare more poor people in developing nations. As if those governments don't have enough to worry about from illnesses such as AIDS, they now are facing enormous costs for cancer, emphysema and early deaths from smoking.

Alone they couldn't fight the monster tobacco companies; together, they came up with a treaty that has a chance of preventing many gruesome illnesses and deaths.

But there is a big catch. The 192 countries each must ratify the treaty, which becomes law in countries that approve it once 40 nations sign it. The U.S. Senate will either accept it or reject it.

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Tobacco companies, which lost a lobbying blitz in Geneva, will have another chance. If the Senate does not ratify the treaty, it will lose its force, as many other treaties have. The United States will have a huge black cloud over its reputation.

The Senate does not like to ratify treaties — many senators weirdly think their life force will be spent if they ratify international agreements and that the United States will become a mere puppet at the hands of, say, countries like Mauritius.

Nonsense. The Senate should do the right thing and quickly ratify the treaty and save the world — or at least its children — from millions more senseless deaths from tobacco.


Ann McFeatters is Washington bureau chief of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Toledo Blade. E-mail amcfeatters@nationalpress.com. Scripps Howard News Service

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