The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has launched new guidelines aimed at helping Caribbean and other countries end the “reign” of the tobacco industry.
WHO said the new guidelines, together with an accompanying publication, will help Caribbean and other governments “do much more” to implement regulations and address the “exploitation of tobacco product regulations.”
“The tobacco industry has enjoyed years of little or no regulation, mainly due to the complexity of tobacco product regulation and lack of appropriate guidance in this area,” said Douglas Bettcher, the director of the WHO Department for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases.
The UN said the guide, “Tobacco product regulation: Building laboratory testing capacity,” provides practical and stepwise approaches to implementing tobacco testing relevant to a wide range of countries, especially those with inadequate resources to establish testing facilities.
The guide also provides regulators and policymakers with comprehensible information on how to test tobacco products, what products to test, and how to use testing data in a meaningful manner to support regulation, the UN said.
It said the guidelines will also assist in the implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control – a global treaty combating the tobacco epidemic – through strengthening tobacco product regulation capacity in WHO member States
