“Health advocates are urging President Obama’s new trade representative to make sure a pending trade deal with Pacific rim nations can’t be used to gut U.S. tobacco control efforts,” The Hill’s “Global Affairs” blog reports. In a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics urged the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to include language in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement “that ensures no provision can be used as a legal basis to prevent participating nations from enacting ‘the strongest possible, nondiscriminatory tobacco control measures that it considers appropriate for the protection of public health,'” according to the blog. “From a public health perspective, international trade and investment rules should not result in increased tobacco consumption,” the letter said, adding, “They should also not inhibit any nation from exercising its sovereign authority to protect the health of its citizens by enacting legitimate public health measures aimed at reducing tobacco use,” according to the blog (Pecquet, 6/25).