Columns

President Bush Goes It Alone Again
This Time, It's Tobacco

March 2005

Rep. Henry A. Waxman

With pressing challenges to confront across the globe, the United States needs the support of the international community. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration's unilateral approach to foreign policy has left the United States largely isolated and has undermined international cooperation to promote security, health, and environmental protection.

This Administration's aversion to international efforts was evident soon after President Bush took office. The President abandoned the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, announced his plan to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, and opposed a strong Biological Weapons Convention. After a period of cooperation following 9/11, the Administration's heavy handed approach to Iraq has left us virtually alone, bearing a heavy burden of lives and expense.

At the start of his second term, the President has signaled he would like the U.S. relationship with the world to improve. But he is off to a poor start.

Earlier this month, the world's first public health treaty went into effect. Ratified by more than fifty nations, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control will enhance international efforts to counter tobacco advertising and marketing, combat cigarette smuggling, and promote smoking cessation. Such global cooperation is urgently needed to address a spreading epidemic that claims nearly 5 million lives a year.

Unfortunately, United States is again watching from the sidelines. Instead of supporting this landmark international agreement, the Bush Administration has spent much of the past four years seeking to weaken and undermine it.

The negotiations on the tobacco treaty began in 1999 with the full backing of the Clinton Administration. The United States advocated for strong measures to limit tobacco marketing and exposure to secondhand smoke. After the 2000 presidential election, however, the U.S. role changed dramatically.

Negotiators appointed by the Bush Administration opposed mandatory tobacco taxes, binding protections against secondhand smoke, and efforts to get rid of misleading cigarette descriptors such as "light" and "mild." At one point, U.S. representatives even objected to a requirement that warning labels be printed in languages that foreign consumers could read. In November 2001, an executive at tobacco giant Philip Morris wrote in an internal company email that his company's positions on the treaty were "if anything … to the left of the Bush Administration."

The Bush Administration managed to weaken, but not eviscerate, the treaty's language. On the eve of the final negotiating session in February 2003, the State Department cabled foreign ministries urging that trade agreements should override the tobacco treaty, but was rebuffed by other delegations. While over 160 national delegations backed the final language, the United States complained that the deal required warning labels to be too prominent and demanded that countries be allowed to pick and choose which provisions to enforce.

Unable to convince the international community to accept the weakened language, the Administration finally acquiesced. Just prior to a meeting of the World Health Assembly in May 2003, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced his support of the treaty without any changes. One year later, in May 2004, Secretary Thompson signed the agreement on behalf of the United States.

But there has been little progress since then. The President has yet to send the treaty to the Senate for ratification - a necessary step for participation in the Framework Convention. The Administration has also failed to support legislation needed to bring the United States into compliance with the new standards. As a result, the world is implementing the agreement without the United States.

The Administration's on-again, off-again approach to the treaty has generated doubts about its intentions. That the Republican party continues to accept millions of dollars from major tobacco companies only fans suspicions. Other nations are justified in asking what is more important to the Bush Administration: tobacco money or the health of millions of youth across the globe?

These nations have already been asking whether the Administration values energy company profits over progress against global warming, and pharmaceutical interests over efforts to contain biological weapons. More doubts about the intentions of the United States can only harm our ability to obtain assistance from our friends and allies.

The President is now attempting to convince other nations that the U.S. interest in the Middle East is democracy and not oil. Unless he revisits his Administration's go it alone attitude on these other matters, however, this will be a hard case to make.