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The WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was created to consider policies aimed at reducing tobacco use and reducing the flow of black market tobacco across the world's borders.
In November, its members will meet to discuss a proposal from Kenya and Burkina Faso that would impose a new system of tracking tobacco products around the world, for the purpose of fighting the illegal tobacco trade.
According to a copy of the agenda for this month's regional tobacco meeting that was obtained by the Washington Examiner, the two African countries are pushing for the anti-tobacco group to oppose any track and trace program for tobacco that is "under the influence, designed, facilitated or owned by the Tobacco Industry."
Such a plan, if implemented and enforced, would require tobacco companies in any country that ratifies the proposal to submit to WHO-approved technology that would track their products around the world.
The aim of that system would be to help the UN reduce the diversion of legal tobacco shipments into the black market. But that system would effectively supersede the control systems that individual companies now have in place, and would give the WHO unprecedented access into how tobacco products flow around the world.
The U.S. is not a party to convention, but any advancement of the plan is likely to be met with opposition from companies and other groups that don't want to turn over supply chain data to the WHO's anti-tobacco group.
The WHO "has zero experience in combating organized crime," American Enterprise Institute scholar Dr. Roger Bate wrote last month. According to Bate, governments, security experts and private industry must be allowed to effectively cooperate in order to reduce illegal tobacco.
The plan is also likely to raise complaints about why Kenya proposed it. Trafficking in illegal tobacco products is reportedly rampant in Kenya and in Africa more broadly.
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