Nonostante sia un paese civile, l’Olanda è in ritardo nell’implementazione del trattato FCTC; per aiutare gli olandesi a liberarsi dal fumo si può firmare qui.

    Questo il testo (inglese)

“ To Prime Minister Mark Rutte

Dear Sir,

Every year, tobacco kills nearly six million people and that number is rising. The tobacco crisis is both devastating and preventable – the single largest preventable cause of death and disease on the planet. That’s why the global community has unified behind a global tobacco treaty – a document enshrining the world’s most effective tobacco control measures – that will save 200 million lives by 2050 when fully implemented.

Industry interference in the treaty is the single greatest threat to its lifesaving measures. That is why the global community has made sure the treaty includes safeguards against such interference, enshrined in Article 5.3, which states that the tobacco industry has an irreconcilable conflict of interest with public health. The guidelines to Article 5.3 encourage governments to establish measures that limit tobacco industry interactions with government activities, and to put in place public disclosure measures.

The Netherlands ratified the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), and protecting public health from tobacco is one of the priorities of your government. However your government is not complying with its obligations under Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTCand its guidelines. Your Ministries routinely partner with the tobacco industry, allowing it to advise on tobacco control policy. The policy changes you introduced since October 2010 have not at all contributed to preventing tobacco-related disease and deaths, in fact, they’ve put more of our citizens’ lives in danger. Your health ministry has taken steps to:

1. Weaken your smokefree law.
2. Cut public education campaigns to raise awareness about the harmful health effects of tobacco products.
3. Cut funding for cessation programs to help people quit smoking.
4. Cut all funding for the National Tobacco Control Centre STIVORO starting in 2013.
5. Refuses to consider additional tobacco control measures recommended by the WHO FCTC such as graphic health warnings, prohibiting additives that appeal to young people, and not supporting the new European Product Directive that supports such regulation.

Not only does this endanger progress that the Netherlands has made thus far to reduce the devastating impact of tobacco-related disease and death, but also international progress as the Netherlands routinely stymies tobacco control initiatives at the level of the European Union, the WHO FCTC, and summits on non-communicable diseases. Even worse, the Dutch model is now being used as an industry model for how to effectively coopt public health measures.

These policies are endangering the lives of millions of young people by weakening progress on tobacco control in the Netherlands, undermines your country’s obligations under the WHO FCTC, and must be challenged in the interest of public health.

We therefore ask you to please stop partnering with the tobacco industry, and instead to hold this industry accountable for so much preventable death in The Netherlands and around the world. We call upon the Dutch government to prioritize the health of its citizens by:
• Reversing the current breaking down of tobacco control policy and infrastructure, before the damage is irreversible;
• Implementing effective tobacco control by implementing the life-saving measures of the FCTC.
• Fulfill the Netherlands’ obligations under the FCTC’s Article 5.3 and not partner with the tobacco industry which is accountable for untold deaths and puts its profits over people’s livelihoods.

Yours sincerely, “