Where has all the tobacco news gone?

It would seem that if dozens of countries agreed to an international treaty on just about any topic the consensus and its ramifications would be viewed as groundbreaking and therefore be well-covered in the media. This would seem to be especially true if the treaty related to an extremely crucial public health issue, one which causes the premature death of an estimated 5 million people worldwide annually. One might expect that the story would be major front-page news.

Yesterday, the World Health Organization announced that its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) would become law, as it had received the required ratification by 40 countries. In an effort to reduce both the demand for and supply of tobacco worldwide, countries ratifying the FCTC agree to adopt specific regulations on issues such as tobacco pricing, taxes, advertising, sponsorship, labeling, second-hand smoke, and sales of tobacco to minors. 167 countries (including the United States) and the European Community have signed the agreement, which will now go into effect in February 2005 for the countries that have ratified it.

As the FCTC involved many countries agreeing to what could completely change the face of tobacco promotion, sales, and use worldwide, I expected to see the story plastered on many newspaper headlines and news websites today. Yet many major news sources - CNN.com, ABCnews.com, and the print edition of the New York Times, for example - did not contain any coverage whatsoever of the agreement. Coming in the midst of the absence of reporting by the mainstream media on the current $280 billion United States Department of Justice lawsuit against tobacco companies, the lack of attention to the FCTC comes as less of a surprise - but it is still troubling.

Perhaps I am more aware of this issue than most others, having just written ACSH s most recent publication on smoking and women s magazines. We have been studying the smoking-related messages in popular magazines since 1965, finding that many magazines often ignore the health risks of smoking or send mixed messages about the behavior. Our latest survey of 15 magazines found that the lack of attention to smoking and lung cancer continued in some magazines, even when the topic was relevant and even while magazines frequently discussed other serious topics such as breast and skin cancer. The problems were those of both omission and commission; for example, some magazines actively downplayed the risks of smoking (in one case, by saying that shaping up eating habits can cut the risk for lung cancer as much as quitting smoking can).

Of course, a particular magazine s lack of discussion of the hazards of smoking is different from what amounts to a media blackout of an international treaty about tobacco and a large lawsuit against the cigarette industry. Because of their stated goals and functions, major, respectable news sources must convey important news to the public (such as the ratification of the FCTC), while women s magazines are not obligated to cover any specific topic (but still do their readers a disservice by having misguided priorities). However, perhaps they reflect similar underlying issues.

While smoking is the top preventable cause of death in the United States, many media sources do not find its importance to be a good enough reason to discuss the hazards of smoking and the efforts for smoking prevention. News about smoking and tobacco regulation may not seem as exciting and attention-grabbing as the latest inflated health scare of the day. However, media sources should still reflect tobacco-control as a public health priority, especially when there are important relevant current events on which to report.

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¹ Fowler, J. Peru Ratifies Global Anti-Tobacco Accord. Associated Press: December 1, 2004.

Rivka Weiser is a research intern at the American Council on Science and Health and the author of Smoking and Women s Magazines: 2001-2002.