Annual tobacco industry marketing expenditures nationwide is $9.7 billion with an estimated $1.2 billion portion spent for California marketing each year. Published research studies have found that kids are three times more sensitive to tobacco advertising than adults and are more likely to be influenced to smoke by cigarette marketing than by peer pressure, and that one-third of underage experimentation with smoking is attributable to tobacco company advertising. While most western markets already comply, the provisions are likely to make a more significant impact in emerging markets, which could potentially be at risk. WHO's Member States and the tobacco industry continues litigation in Geneva for their fifth round of negotiations, scheduled to be ready by May 2003, on the proposed Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Global Regulatory Authority by 2003 is the specific proposed FCTC that is being negotiated by WHO as an enforceable global tobacco control treaty. The WHO treaty covers many key issues that must be addressed immediately and enforced by a global tobacco regulator to ensure the tobacco epidemic is finally under control.
WHO initiative represents one of the most serious new global regulatory threats to the tobacco industry and the tobacco industry is retaliating with extreme measures. Since the end of the 1970s the tobacco industry began to fear that WHO would use criticism of the companies" activities in developing countries to fuel a global anti-smoking campaign. They began promoting the view that tobacco-related illness was almost entirely a concern of affluent countries and that WHO's tobacco control activities represented a First World agenda carried out at the expense of the developing world. Numerous campaigns have been waged against WHO-sponsored studies from the tobacco industry with the focus upon the Third World countries to support their cause.