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International letter petition not to negotiate directly with or back down to the demands of Philip Morris International

Honorable President of República Oriental del Uruguay
Mr. José Mujica Cordano

First we would like to congratulate once again to Uruguay for the achievements and international leadership in tobacco control , while to communicate to you that the international legal action against Uruguay by the world's biggest multinational tobacco, the Philip Morris International (PMI), is a maneuver in order to force Uruguay to negotiate and to give up in your efforts to protect the lives and health of the Uruguayans. PMI has chosen as a pressure mechanism "the eventual economic risk" that Uruguay would have if the dispute is taking place.

We offer our support and help to deal with this situation and encourage you to not negotiate or give up.

We also want to be emphatic in pointing out that all tobacco control measures Uruguay implemented, are rationale , based in scientific evidence and covered by the first International Public Health Treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), so that Uruguay has a good case for any international court.

Uruguay is not the only one. The Government of Australia has recently approved plain packaging, which is a strongest measure than the current in Uruguay, and it is the gold standard, promoted by FCTC Article 11 guidelines. Honduras's parliament also recently approved health warnings covering 80%, following the example of Uruguay.

In 2006, a highly-respected impartial US jurist, the Honorable Gladys Kessler, in a historical legal sentence decision, confirmed that since the 1970s, PMI, and other tobacco industries, have misled consumers into believing that so-called low tar and light cigarettes are healthier than other cigarettes and an acceptable alternative to quitting. They did this even though they have known for decades that light cigarettes offer no clear health benefit. Judge Kessler described how the tobacco industries dramatically increased their sales by exploiting consumers’ belief that light cigarettes are less harmful, while claiming falsely that their marketing is based only on smokers’ preference for a lighter taste. Judge Kessler finds that the Defendants are continuing to make these false and misleading claims in order to reassure smokers and dissuade them from quitting.


With the legal action against Uruguay, what really PMI aim is to crush the Uruguayan government and thus undermine international efforts to combat the tobacco epidemic.

Uruguay is a tobacco control model for the international community. If PMI would succeed in rolling back the progress of Uruguay, will cause severe damage to the FCTC process, and to the 169 sovereign countries that are Parties to the FCTC. That, and nothing else, is the real reason why PMI has strategically focused on Uruguay, and has done so in the year your country will host the Fourth Conference of the Parties (COP 4), the highest FCTC governance body.

Perhaps someone it the Uruguayan Government could think that a "small" step backward in the current tobacco control regulations would prevent the cost and risk of litigation and cause minimal damage to the tobacco control.

But not Mr President, the cost could be great. Not only for the image, prestige and international credibility of Uruguay, but mainly because it put at serious risk the tobacco control development at international level, especially in the poorest countries, which could see frightened, by the exercise of power by the multinational tobacco against Uruguay.

In addition to that , negotiating with them now, exposes your country to create dangerous precedent, which could be used for this or other multinational tobacco company, to force Uruguay to back again in the near future, in another tobacco control issue , as taxation or smoke-free environments.

Mr. President, use Article 5.3 of the FCTC and its Guideline, which states that "At the time of setting and implementing their public health policies for the monitoring of snuff, the Parties shall act to protect these policies against the interests commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law ", to reject any attempt to pressure by the tobacco multinational and present to the COP 4, in November 2010 in Punta del Este, a formal request from the Government of Uruguay, to 169 States, in order to create a mechanism and develop a strategy that protects not only Uruguay, but the rest of the country against similar maneuvers.

We are committed to finding support among countries for this initiative.

We know we can count on you and you can count on us to defend together the right to life and health of people, above the commercial interests of a few.

Yours sincerely,