Essential Action recently filed comments with the US Trade Representative urging that tobacco be excluded from the ambit of the proposed US-Malaysia Free Trade Agreement.
Our basic position is that there is no legitimate purpose for inclusion of tobacco products in trade agreements, which are designed to facilitate trade and remove tariff and non-tariff barriers to commercial transactions — an inappropriate goal for tobacco products, consumption of which is harmful.
Our comments very briefly review tobacco control efforts in Malaysia, and then explain why inclusion of tobacco products in the FTA would threaten such efforts.
The full text is available here.