A/79/177 products also pose significant health risks owing to their low nutritional value and hyper-palatable nature, while being heavily advertised and marketed. 114 51. Marginalized groups are often driven to rely on these unhealthy products as their only real economically or physically available food option, 115 in a shift that replicates colonial power structures and affects communities and individuals in the most disadvantaged positions. 52. In response to mandatory front-of-package warning labelling, the food and beverage industry has been shown to reformulate its products not only to avoid labelling requirements, but also to add micronutrients to promote products through nutrition or health claims. 116 10. Prescription drugs 53. Pharmaceutical companies play a major role in the research and development of life-saving and life-improving medicines. 117 Left unchecked, however, pharmaceutical companies have been shown to seek profit maximization at all costs, often to the expense of individual or public health. 118 54. The number of opioid-related deaths has increased dramatically over recent years, now causing around 80 per cent of deaths attributable to drug use worldwide. 119 This surge is at least partially attributable to reckless and sometimes illegal behaviour by pharmaceutical companies, who purposely flooded the market with prescription opioids and marketed them aggressively and misleadingly, without proper warnings about associated health risks, which has resulted in criminal and civil liability cases. 120 Paired with a lack of adequate regulation and oversight, those practices led to a public health crisis that persists to date. 121 11. Environmental harm and greenwashing 55. Emerging tobacco products pose environmental threats, as the production of batteries and electronic components generates waste that is hard to dispose of or recycle. 122 In food and nutrition, the environmental impact of ultra-processed products is well documented, as they have a high carbon and water footprint 123 and produce large amounts of waste. 124 __________________ 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 24-13226 Pan American Health Organization, Ultra-Processed Food and Drink Products in Latin America: Trends, Impact on Obesity Policy Implications (Washington, D.C., 2015), p. 6. A/78/185, paras. 21 and 28. Submission from Global Health Advocacy Incubators. WHO, Regional Office for Europe, Commercial Determinants of Noncommunicable Diseases in the WHO European Region (Copenhagen, 2024). Ibid. WHO, “Opioid overdose”. United States, Department of Justice, “Justice Department announces global resolution of criminal and civil investigations with opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma and civil settlement with members of the Sackler family”, press release, 21 October 2020. Andrew Kolodny, “How FDA failures contributed to the opioid crisis”, AMA Journal of Ethics, vol. 22, No. 8 (August 2020). Expose Tobacco and WHO, “Talking trash: behind the tobacco industry’s ‘green’ public relations”, May 2022; and submission from Corporate Accountability. Paraskevi Seferidi and others, “The neglected environmental impacts of ultra -processed foods”, The Lancet: Planetary Health, vol. 4, No. 10 (October 2020); and Josefa Maria Fellegger Garzillo and others, “Ultra-processed food intake and diet carbon and water footprints: a national study in Brazil”, Revista de Saúde Pública, vol. 56 (2022). Seferidi and others, “The neglected environmental impacts”. 13/28