Emasculating the FDA

NEARLY 17 years after the Philippines became a party to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the first international treaty negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), efforts to comply with some of the remaining major commitments are met with even more intensified resistance from the legislature.

In its periodic reports to the Conference of Parties (COP), the governing body of the WHO-FCTC, the government has always identified "political environment" as the constraint or barrier encountered in implementing the convention.