The tobacco endgame: experiences from Finland

In 2010 Finland was the first country in the world to include the tobacco endgame as the objective of its national tobacco regulation. Finland aims to be smoke free by 2030. In this chapter we analyse the endgame objective of the Finnish Tobacco Act from a human rights perspective. The analysis of the chapter is twofold. First, we show by discussing the legislative history of the endgame objective in the Tobacco Act that the objective was not supported by human rights arguments during the drafting. Instead, concerns were raised that the objective would allow for interpretations restricting fundamental and human rights of users of tobacco products as well as rights associated with the tobacco industry. Another concern was that the means presented in the Tobacco Act would not be suitable for achieving the aim. Secondly, we analyse the endgame objective of the Tobacco Act from a human rights perspective. We focus especially on children’s rights, as children are dependent on adults and susceptible to the dangers associated with smoking. The analysis demonstrates that human rights obligations can be interpreted as permitting and even requiring a tobacco endgame or other similar strategy aiming at reducing smoking as much as possible.