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World Health Organization Busy Tackling Smoking as Ebola Spreads

No smoking, please

Wikimedia Commons
October 14, 2014

The World Health Organization is taking on the most pressing health issue facing the world today: smoking. Instead of focusing its efforts on the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, the WHO is pushing to tax cigarettes at a higher rate, according to Dan Mitchell.

Under the "leadership" of the U.N.’s World Health Organization, hundreds of bureaucrats have descended on the city for the "Conference of the Parties (COP6) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC)."

But this isn’t the usual junket. The bureaucrats are pushing to create "guidelines" for tobacco taxation. Most notably, they want excise taxes to be at least 70 percent of the cost of a pack of cigarettes.

Mitchell says this will lead to bigger government, criminal activity, and eroding national sovereignty. He also points out that revenue collected from these cigarette taxes rarely goes towards the programs supporters say they will.

By the way, the health community will argue that globally coerced tobacco tax hikes are a good idea since the money can be used to fund programs that discourage tobacco use.

Yet we have some experience in this area. Many years ago, state politicians bullied tobacco companies into a giant cash settlement, accompanied by promises that much of the money would be used to fight tobacco use.

But, as NPR reports, politicians couldn’t resist squandering the money in other areas.

So far tobacco companies have paid more than $100 billion to state governments as part of the 25-year, $246 billion settlement. …all across the country hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to states, and the states have made choices not to spend the money on public health and tobacco prevention. …Myron Levin covered the tobacco industry for the Los Angeles Times for many years and is also the founder of the health and safety news site Fair Warning. He says talking states into spending settlement money on tobacco prevention is a tough sell.

Mitchell then chides bureaucrats for focusing on the wrong thing.

But presumably there is a legitimate government role in preventing something like infectious diseases. So why isn’t WHO focused solely on things such as Ebola and SARS rather than engaging in ideological campaigns to expand the size and scope of government?

Published under: Ebola , Taxes