Uruguay wins judgment against big tobacco.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
Little Uruguay beat the odds, according to dozens of Latin American and European newspapers, which dramatically announced the country's victory over a powerful multinational tobacco company with stories all headlined "David Triumphs over Goliath." It took six years of pressures and threats, but at last the position of the Montevideo government prevailed on July 8, when the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) based in Washington, D.C., ruled against tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI) (NotiSur, Feb. 4, 2011).
Uniform cigarette packaging
The Uruguayan daily La Republica wrote of the ICSID, "In condemning the world's largest cigarette producer, it acknowledged tobacco and tobacco smoke kill those who use it and those who are obliged to live with smokers, the passive smokers, including most notably children. Without expressly saying so, the agency supported the country's public health policy and opened the way for it to apply complementary measures that, in fact, will remove the numerous logos as well as any other sign of the major cigarette brands from the view of Uruguayans."
The ruling of the World Bank tribunal is unprecedented internationally. It puts government health decisions above a company's commercial claims and establishes that jurisprudence on a global level.
President Tabare Vazquez said, "Uruguay defended its sovereign power to set health-warning norms, prohibiting the use of symbols or terms tending to undermine the false suggestion that some cigarette brands are less harmful than others ... Without violating any treaty or international agreement, the government has met its unwavering commitment to protect the health of the people."
Using the jargon of soccer, the Uruguayans' favorite sport, the Center for the Investigation of the Tobacco Epidemic (Centro de Investigacion para la Epidemia de Tabaquismo) said, "We played and won a game on the road, because for a government to take the case to trade and investment courts outside the national stage is a risk, more so when Uruguay alleged public health was the principal motive for its policies. Moreover, the PMI suit was against Uruguay, but its real campaign was against the world. PMI chose the country that had the least ability to defend itself, but also one that showed the greatest successes in efforts to combat smoking. If it had won in the ICSID, punishing the most successful country, the tobacco company would have...
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