Human rights as a tool for tobacco control in Latin America

Abstract

T tobacco epidemic is one of the most dangerous and pervasive public health concerns the world faces today. Tobacco consumption is an epidemic that spreads not by infection, but by promotion and advertisement, and, more importantly, lack of effective regulation. In other words, it is an epidemic that can be controlled if governments implement appropriate tobacco control measures. Integrating a human rights approach in tobacco control has many advantages. Human rights law is one of the most powerful legal tools that can be used both domestically (in-country) and internationally. Moreover, human rights are also widely used in political discourse and they usually influence policy debates. As an area of discourse that is used globally, human rights law has a reach similar to the global dimension of the tobacco epidemic. Despite its utility, a human rights approach to advance tobacco control policies has not been widely used by the tobacco control movement. In fact, one could argue that the tobacco industry has been more proactive in using human rights law to attack tobacco control policies.1 This article addresses the connections between human rights law and tobacco control. Providing concrete examples from Latin America, we demonstrate the potential of a human rights approach to tobacco control, while at the same time we aim to explain how such approach can be used. This paper is divided into three sections. The first section provides background on human rights law and Human rights as a tool for tobacco control in Latin America