GENEVA (Reuters) - Health officials from more than 100 countries have agreed to study widening a global tobacco control treaty to target advertising over the Internet and satellite television, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which came into force a year ago, bans advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco products, blamed for five million early deaths a year.
But officials from 113 countries, meeting in their first conference of the parties, which ended on Friday, found that the May 2003 pact failed to cover all cross-border advertising, senior WHO officials said.
Tobacco will prematurely end the lives of 10 million people a year by 2020 if current trends are not reversed, the WHO says. There are currently some 1.3 billion smokers worldwide.
Working parties will study legally-binding protocols to clamp down on cross-border advertising as well as illicit trade, and report back by mid-2007, the officials told a news briefing at the end of two weeks of talks.
"The blindspot was identified that there are other forms of advertising coming from non-party states being beamed into parties -- Internet communication and sports sponsorship which maybe comes from satellite television," said Douglas Bettcher, coordinator of the WHO's Framework Tobacco Control Office.
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Hm I was on a website some time ago that sold weed online...
I remember kids walking to hotel lobbies to buy cigs out of the machines.
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