This week there will be a meeting of tobacco regulators under auspices of the FDA-funded WHO Global Tobacco Regulators’ Forum (GTRF) in the Netherlands and part of the preparation for FCTC COP-9, which will be held in 2020, also the Netherlands. Two leaked papers from WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) suggest that WHO is building up to an attempt to treat reduced risk products no differently to cigarettes or with even greater hostility.
I am proud to be a co-author of a commentary published today in The Lancet: Nicotine without smoke: fighting the tobacco epidemic with harm reduction (PDF) with Robert Beaglehole (lead author), Ruth Bonita and Ben Youdan. In a nutshell, we take issue with the anti-innovation stance of WHO and many groups working in public health:
Vaping and other smoke-free products have the potential to reduce the enormous harm of smoked tobacco products. The stakes of getting policy responses to smoke-free products wrong are high, especially if such restrictions stop millions of the world’s smokers accessing safer alternatives. It is disappointing that in its latest tobacco report,[3] WHO clings to outdated orthodoxy when it could embrace innovation. Equating smoke-free products with cigarettes only serves to protect the stranglehold of the cigarette trade on the world’s nicotine users and will nullify the potential of modern tobacco harm reduction strategies.
Dear WHO FCTC, do not block the exits for people trying to quit smoking using vaping, smokeless, heated tobacco or novel products. Remember, the enemies of innovation can do more harm than good.
Every two years, the Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control meet to discuss how to advance the treaty. The 8th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-8) is being held this week, 1-6 October, 2018 in Geneva.
I was one of those agitating for the FCTC back in 1999-2003. Generally, the FCTC doesn’t do what normal international treaties do – address some transboundary issue like climate change, international trade or intellectual property. It tries to establish norms for regulation of tobacco commerce within countries – a kind of solidarity mechanism for national anti-tobacco policy. The problem is that this idea all goes sour when the WHO, Convention Secretariat and/or Parties agree, in solidarity, to normalise truly terrible policies – for example, to encourage prohibition of e-cigarettes, to treat all smokeless tobacco as though it is the same and just as risky as smoking, or to regulate heated tobacco products as though they are cigarettes. All really harmful ideas that protect the cigarette trade, perpetuate smoking and cause more disease and death.
Mike Bloomberg and the WHO DG launching the Bloomberg-funded report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2017. An unsurfaced conflict of interest?
We’ve sent a letter to WHO and the FCTC secretariat in advance of FCTC COP-8 (1-6 October, Geneva) – protesting about WHO’s inclination towards prohibition and excessive regulation of alternative nicotine delivery systems (ANDS). For background, see papers on vaping (FCTC/COP/8/10) and heated tobacco products and others (FCTC/COP/8/8).
I’m sometimes accused of being a WHO-sceptic, or worse. No more! In the run up to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control COP-7 meeting in Delhi, 7-12 November, I have been challenged to say something positive about how the FCTC could do useful and constructive things on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from a public health point of view, other than the default answer “absolutely nothing at all”.
I sometimes refer to ENDS – Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems – to mean vaping equipment and liquids, e-cigarettes etc. Apologies.
Most international treaties welcome observers and diversity of opinion. Not the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which has its next major Conference of the Parties on 7-12 November 2016, in Delhi. The WHO carefully choose who it allows to observe its secretive proceedings, ensuring only organisations that agree with it are admitted as observers. It betrays the intellectual void at the heart of the WHO and its treaty – it simply cannot cope with scrutiny, challenge or reconciling other interests or constraints. A comparison with the approach to observers taken by the UN convention governing climate change is instructive… Continue reading “First build your echo chamber – how WHO excludes dissent and diversity”
Dr Chan is at war – but who or what is she fighting?
The World Health Organisation does a good line in war-like rhetoric when it comes to tobacco policy. But what is it actually at war with? In this post, I examine the confusion in ‘tobacco control’ about what it is actually trying to achieve. Continue reading “Who or what is the World Health Organisation at war with?”
National governments should protect the cigarette trade
I’m always wary of calling a new low in public health, given the competition down in its murkiest, most depraved depths, but here is a strong contender…
Statement On the Declaration of the 6th Conference of the Parties of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
