Foreign Policy: Document of the Week: Is the U.N. Revisiting the Ban on Big Tobacco?
“…[A] quiet lobbying campaign by the [tobacco] industry, which has a large presence in Geneva, to broker a cease-fire with the United Nations may be bearing some fruit. On his final day on the job, Michael Moller, who stepped down last month as the head of the U.N. office in Geneva, wrote an appeal to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres suggesting that it may be time to end a moratorium on U.N. cooperation with the tobacco industry. We are sharing his note as our Document of the Week. … The memo has fueled suspicions among some U.N. staff that the influence of tobacco giants — including Japan Tobacco International, the owner of Camel and Winston brands (outside of the United States), and Philip Morris International, with a large corporate presence in Geneva — is being felt behind the scenes at the U.N. and the World Health Organization…” (Lynch, 7/12).