Trade and Public Health: The WTO, Tobacco, Alcohol, and Diet.

AuthorIshikawa, Yoshimichi
PositionBook review

Benn McGrady, Trade and Public Health: The WTO, Tobacco, Alcohol, and Diet (Cambridge University Press, 2011), ISBN: 9781 107657564, 340 pages

According to a fact sheet issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2013, 'noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)' kill more than 36 million people each year, four groups of diseases (ie, cardiovascular illnesses, cancers, respiratory ailments, and diabetes) account for around 80% of all NCD deaths, and the risk factors mainly include tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, and unhealthy diet. (1) In order to protect their citizens from NCDs associated with these risk factors, states take various measures, including (i) price-based measures (eg, taxes, subsidies), (ii) restrictions on marketing (eg, advertising bans), (iii) product regulation (eg, ban on sale and importation), and (iv) labeling measures (eg, plain packaging).

Although there is almost no doubt that the objective of these measures should be considered as legitimate, they usually result in only a limiting effect on importation or even in treating imported products differently from domestic products. Accordingly, the consistency of these measures has been addressed through the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and in response, Dr Benn McGrady, an Australian lawyer based at the O'Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law at Georgetown University, has undertaken comprehensive research in this book. Throughout the book, which consists of seven chapters, including the Introduction and Conclusion, McGrady's focus is on whether the domestic regulatory autonomy preserved by the WTO Agreement reflects an appropriate balance between the protection of public health and the interests underlying the WTO Agreement, in relation to NCDs associated with tobacco use, harmful consumption of alcohol, and poor diet.

Several international instruments have been established by the WHO for the purpose of combating NCDs, including the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Thus, the question arises as to how these international health instruments are normatively integrated with the WTO Agreement and how they may affect the scope of the regulatory autonomy available to WTO Members. According to McGrady, although some mechanisms exist that compel WTO panels to take into account these international instruments (eg article 31 (3) (c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties), the case law shows that their applicable scopes are...

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