Smoke-free Europe ConferenceResolution on the European Tobacco Strategy

The Conference for a Smoke-free Europe, Helsinki, 2-4 October 1996, with more than 500 scientists, administrators, politicians and public health professionals and activists from 50 countries, recognizing that tobacco products cause 850,000 deaths annually in the European region:

• endorses the International Strategy for Tobacco Control of the 9th World Conference on Tobacco or Health (1994). The Conference is aware that other strategies to promote nonsmoking and smoke-free environments have been devised and recognizes their value for stimulating and guiding action;
• also fully endorses of the recommendations of the High Level Cancer Expert Committee of the Europe Against Cancer programme. The Conference also urges countries outside the European Union to implement them.

Tobacco products cause a variety of diseases ranging from cancers and respiratory diseases to cardiovascular diseases. The Conference urges all public health organizations to contribute to tobacco prevention efforts in their communities. All national and international agencies , non-governmental organizations, the European Union and the World Health oganization should collaborate closely on tobacco control issues.

The conference declares:

1. All people have the right to smoke-free air. Children and other vulnerable people need unpolluted air for health. Everyone has a right to a smoke-free environment at home, in public places and at work. Communities and national governments have a duty to guarantee that no one is involuntarily exposed to tobacco smoke. They must legislate to guarantee a smoke-free environment in work places and public places as well as to carry out campaigns to encourage people to make their homes smoke-free.
2. ) There is a wide scientific concensus, as reflected in the work of the US Food and Drug Administration, that nicotine in tobacco products creates and sustains addiction. Most smokers start at early age thus developing a substance dependence. All governments should protect adolescents from tobacco addiction, as they do from other addictions, by using education and well enforced legal restrictions on the sales of tobacco to adolescents.
3. The new initiative on the international framework convention on tobacco prepared by WHO deserves the support of all countries and the European Community.
4. In countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) the tobacco industry should be made to comply with the same rules as in the European Union countries. The Conference urges all CEE Governments to take urgent action against tobacco, following the example set by Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia, in order to improve health and to prevent the widening gap in health status and legislation between EU and CEE countries. All international organizations should support politically, financially and otherwise, action in CEE countries.
5. Since women may be more vulnerable than men to the principle diseases related to tobacco, and as they are also a prime target of the tobacco industry, all countries are urged to adopt strategies recognising these special needs.
6. All governments are urged to provide adequate resources to fund tobacco control activities in their country.

Finally, the Conference recognises that the key issues are:

• ensuring that reducing tobacco consumption is made a top health priority
• protecting young people from all pressures to take up the smoking habit
• building alliances and coalitions between all sectors of society, including health professionals, mass media and businesses
• discouraging the onset and maintenance of tobacco use by health education and information and giving support for quitting to tobacco users
• making smoke-free flights available throughout Europe
• using tobacco liability and litigation as attractive new tools for tobacco control
• legislating to ban all direct and indirect advertising and promotion of tobacco products
• increasing tobacco taxation significantly
• allocating a proportion of tobacco tax revenue for tobacco control and health promotion
• abolishing all subsidies for tobacco production
• establishing effective health warnings and regulation of tobacco packaging including the introduction of generic packaging
• regulating tar and nicotine yields of tobacco products
• banning self-service displays and vending machines
• ending sales of duty free cigarettes and other tobacco products
• blocking the international marketing efforts of the transnational tobacco industry
• monitoring the tobacco epidemic