From 14 to 21 March 2010, member states of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) met in Geneva for their fourth round of meetings on a new treaty to fight the global problem of illicit trade.

Although the parties “did make some significant progress”, as the WHO said in a press statement, talks ended without a final agreement.
Under discussion was a ban on duty-free sales of cigarettes, popular with international air travellers, but which health campaigners claim are often diverted into illicit trade.
Furthermore, the draft treaty would require countries to licence tobacco manufacturers and retailers and set up the tracing regime with a database. However, talks apparently stumbled over discussions of details, mainly a tracking and tracing system.
While both Philip Morris and British American Tobacco said they would back a protocol with effective measures against illicit trade, they also said that a tracking system must cover all countries and producers and warned its cost would be passed on to smokers. “I would say it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars for the industry to implement,” Pat Heneghan, global head of anti-illicit trade at BAT, told Reuters. “There are also physical challenges with high-speed production of tens of thousands of cigarettes per minute to get the code on every pack and registered in a database at that speed.”
The outcome of the talks will be reported at the next Conference of Parties to the parent treaty for the protocol, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, in Montevideo, Uruguay, in November 2010. (pi)