The perfect drug

27 years ago, Guadalupe Ponciano Rodríguez began a war against a formidable enemy. His tools to combat it are teaching, activism and science. She is a woman of clear ideas, she is determined to improve the lives of the people who come to ask for her help, some, already with an irreversible problem. The first phrase she throws out in the interview is: “We need air to live, just that.” And Guadalupe Ponciano is a doctor, specialist in cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Her enemy, of course, is tobacco. When someone asks her what she does, her answer is simple: “I basically dedicate my life to helping people stop smoking.”

Guadalupe then decided to dedicate her career facing a drug that, in Mexico alone, claims 63 thousand lives a year according to data presented by the academic and corroborated by PODER. This is an average calculation and refers to diseases that the medical sector relates to the consumption of this substance; “Sometimes there are more deaths,” she explains with dismay and continues: “depending on luck, the weather or diseases. What happened with the COVID-19 pandemic was atrocious, many lives could have been saved if it were not for tobacco (…) many smokers, who unfortunately died with the disease, because if they had not smoked they could have been saved, do you understand me? ? There is a lot of death related to tobacco,” she says.

The fear is not minor. If a calculation is made on the mortality estimates between what happened with COVID-19 caused by the SarsCov-2 virus and deaths from diseases associated with smoking, the numbers are similar. At least at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. During 2022, the Health System authorities reported 26 thousand deaths due to SarsCov-2, while the same authorities, during the same period of time (2022), report 43 thousand 246 deaths due to diseases related to consumption tobacco. That is, that year tobacco surpassed the COVID pandemic in deaths. The problem is that there are no vaccines against smoking. And it continues to take lives, often with the help of the State apparatus, explains the academic.

“Almost 13 static years of tobacco regulation passed in Mexico. Nobody, no public body or institution dared to touch the giant of legal drugs,” says Guadalupe Ponciano Rodríguez, academic at the Faculty of Medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and activist.

Of every 10 cases of lung cancer treated in the country, 9 are associated with tobacco consumption, reveals the Government of Mexico in its advertising for the International Day to Fight Lung Cancer. Therefore, it is not surprising that according to the data collected by the academic, the health sector each year spends at least 116 billion pesos caring for beneficiaries who suffer from one of the four diseases that both doctors and academia indicate have their origin. in smoking.

Faced with this reality, the legislators made changes to the Regulations of the Law, which were not small penalties or extra taxes. It was a total ban on disseminating or promoting the chemical, such that the act aroused several complaints from the industry.

What does the new regulation say and how did the industry respond?

According to the modifications to the Regulations of the General Law for Tobacco Control in Mexico, published on December 16, 2022, the following actions were prohibited: the display of all forms of advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco, through any means communication and dissemination, including the direct and indirect display of tobacco products at points of sale.

This was the reason that companies such as Walmart, Vips and Oxxo filed amparo lawsuits. In the lawsuits promoted by the companies, it is impossible to determine the allegations that the companies presented against the presidential decree, however, as explained by Maximiliano Cárdenas, legal strategies coordinator for Salud Justa MX. who personally attended the document reception offices in the courts in 10 of the 32 districts where these lawsuits were presented, in the majority, the alleged loss of resources derived from the restrictions of the presidential decree and the reforms to the regulations of the Law that regulates tobacco. The lawyer’s route is necessary given that, with the information that the SCJN reveals on its transparency portals, it lacks fundamental information such as: name or company name of the applicant, argumentation against the claimed act and/or number of rulings in favor or against against the act.

“Nicotine has such interesting characteristics from a pharmacological point of view that makes it almost, I would say, the perfect drug,” explains Guadalupe Ponciano, adding that in addition to the chemical’s powerful nature, no other drug has achieved so much support from the authorities – as can be corroborated with the testimony of Maximiliano Cárdenas -, which, in addition to providing it with almost insurmountable addictive qualities, has the advantage over other drugs of the support of the world’s authorities. And he is right. For this reason, she explains, his greatest joy is meeting a patient who has stopped smoking.

Judicial Power protects… businessmen

The dance of figures. When the organization Salud Justa MX, in charge of promoting health, began the campaign against the tobacco industry, it was barely known about a couple of cases where companies, hiding the name of their legal representative and the company name of the promoter, promoted lawsuits of protection against restrictions on tobacco consumption in public spaces. This changed after the arrival of the federal administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The newly elected president already warned of some limitations regarding the sale and consumption of this substance.

Thus, on May 31, 2022, that is, after 3 years, the president signed the decree prohibiting the circulation and commercialization of any input that contained nicotine or similar systems. The decree also contemplated electronic cigarettes.

In response, the tobacco industry was quick to file lawsuits appealing primarily to free trade. At first, the Federal Judiciary Council (CJF) reported only 6 cases, however, after an analysis carried out by PODER of all the documents indexed in the public consultation system, it was possible to corroborate that the CJF safeguards 105 public files or those that can be accessed. But the story does not end here.

PODER consulted the lawyers representing the organization Salud Justa MX and its director, who explained exclusively that it really involves more than two thousand protections. However, the CJF, for some reason, does not index those that are promoted from local courts.

“In order to find the protections, we searched court by court, list by list, and we found 1,733, all against the regulations. We also found more, but we were purifying because there were, let’s say, protections that we thought were against the regulations but in reality they were against some surprise act (…) There were individuals, for example the Walmart company, who since January 16 had presented their protections, so what we did was make a selection of ten judicial circuits, that is, 10 states, there are a total of 32 judicial circuits and of those, we achieved this amount,” explains Maximiliano Cárdenas, strategy coordinator, in an exclusive interview for PODER. legal regulations of Salud Justa MX.

That is, the protections are not visible to everyone because the Federal Judiciary Council has not finished indexing all the documents on its transparency site. And the lawyer explains that there may be more to the search for him to date. Oxxo, 7Eleven, Vips and Walmart are some of the companies that were protected but their information is not public. And the reason why the Judiciary granted them the reservation of data is due to a conservation request. That is, the natural or legal persons who file an injunction can request the confidentiality of said data, thus hiding who are the people who promote smoking.

“There are close to 300 cases that are still alive. The issue there is that if the SCJN attracts them, they will resolve the constitutionality of the regulations, any of them or even all of them. What the industry is mainly challenging is Freedom of Commerce and that the Executive Branch exceeded its powers,” adds the lawyer.

Childhoods at risk

Guadalupe Ponciano raises one of the possible realities of why these protections are approved: “I would like to know why these protections are accepted? What they are based on… well, you know, in economic matters, businessmen think – I want to sell and I want everyone to be able to smoke in my restaurant because I am losing customers. That’s the logic.” The problem with this position, explains the academic, is that it also puts children at risk.

The publicity given to the industry, the windows in front of the candy area, aim to attract new consumers, which, according to Ponciano Rodríguez, although they do not explicitly do so, are aimed at minors.

“Companies like Oxxo put cigarette packs more or less in sight of 10, 12 year old children and placed them next to candy, gum (chewing gum) or popsicles and there are studies in Mexico, in Argentina, in several parts of Latin America, where it is revealed that this promotes the perception of the risk of tobacco to be reduced,” he says.

In her fight, Ponciano Rodriguez encountered a group that has the same interest as her in fighting the tobacco giant. The Salud Justa MX collective, together with the academic, began a campaign that uses the faces of the ministers of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation to draw their attention and encourage them to bring the case to federal courts. .

“Now, during this month and until March, we are going to promote a campaign with this issue (the protections of the tobacco industry) we will use the faces of the ministers inviting them to rule in favor of the people and not the industry, because anyway, you know that Talking about the issue of protections is complicated. So we turn to the ministers because what we want is for them to come back to see us,” says Yahaira Ochoa, Communication coordinator for Salud Justa MX.

Despite the efforts made, the precedent is not favorable, in the country there are almost 2 thousand lawyers willing to continue supporting the tobacco industry, some judges have also already granted a partial suspension of the regulations promoted by the Executive, in general, the industry tobacco has managed to interfere in public decision-making. The only agreement between those who lead this cause is that behind this policy, which they describe as “criminal”, there is a lot, a lot of money. “You know it. There is a lot of money, really, there is a lot,” concludes the researcher.

– Download here the database of (public) protections promoted by the tobacco industry and systematized by PODER.
– Send a message to Clínica Contra El Tobaquismo by WhatsApp: https://wa.me/message/C2GWY3YSS4PAE1

Ricardo Balderas is an investigative journalist at PODER Latin America.
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