| FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE: July 31, 2002
Contact:
Anna White, Essential Action Contact:
Robert Weissman, Essential Action
New York City – Hundreds of citizens, including 200 youth advocates involved with New York's youth empowerment program “Reality Check,” will converge at the UN on Thursday to protest the Bush Administration’s refusal to protect people around the world from predatory transnational tobacco companies. The World Health Organization projects that tobacco will kill 10 million people annually by the year 2030 – the equivalent of 70 jet planes crashing each and every day. If urgent action is not taken, tobacco will soon become the leading cause of death worldwide, causing more deaths than HIV, tuberculosis, maternal mortality, automobile accidents, homicide, and suicide combined. During the last two years, over 190 countries around the world have been negotiating an international tobacco control treaty to counter the escalating global toll of tobacco-related death and disease. The U.S. delegation, however, is working hard to derail the negotiations – on behalf of U.S.-based Philip Morris, the world’s largest tobacco corporation. The company donated $3 million to President Bush and Republicans during the last election cycle. New York City, with a population that is 40% foreign-born, has much to gain from a strong FCTC. Smoking rates within immigrant communities and within the populations of their countries of origin are often similar. Abroad, the tobacco industry frequently uses NYC names, images, and icons in tobacco advertisements to associate smoking with “freedom” and the “American Dream.” Where:
UN Dag Hammarskjold Plaza When:
12:30-2:00 pm, Thursday, August 1st Visuals: In addition to banners and signs, there will be a 10-foot-high cigarette pack prop spoofing the U.S. administration’s promotion of Big Tobacco over public health. Speakers will include: Konstantin Krasovsky, who earlier this year helped expose Philip Morris’ use of a pregnant-looking woman in an cigarette billboard in Ukraine; Inoussa Saouna, who was fired from his job at a radio station after providing information to a New York Times reporter about Philip Morris concerts in Niger at which kids as young as 10-years-old were given free cigarette packs; and Joanne Koldare, Director of the NYC Coalition for a Smoke Free City. For more
information see: EVENT ENDORSED BY: American Lung Association, American Lung Association of New York State, American Lung Association of the City of New York, Center for Tobacco Free New York, Chinese American Planning Council, Essential Action, Infact, New York's Asian American and Pacific Islander Tobacco Control Network, NYC Coalition For A Smoke Free City, SmokeFree Educational Services, Inc., South Asian League of Artists in America, South Bronx Clean Air Coalition. #### Essential Action is a Washington, DC-based corporate accountability group. |