Reporters were forcibly removed and restrained at the World Health Organization (WHO) meeting on tobacco control in Moscow. WHO delegates, representing 179 countries and about 90 percent of the world’s population, voted to move ahead on implementing a key part of the 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
The WHO is the public health arm of the United Nations.
The international tobacco tax provision would commit the countries who signed the U.N. anti-tobacco agreement – nearly every major nation except for the United States, Switzerland and Indonesia – to enact an excise tax equal to at least 70 percent of the retail price of tobacco products.
