Month: August 2025

Panama Doubles Down On Its COP10 Failure 

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How to Lose Friends and Influence No-One by Dr Reina Roa

COPWatch has written about Dr Reina Roa on a number of occasions in the past. We reported on how the Director General of Public Health at the Ministry of Health (MINSA) was being investigated by Panamanian authorities for “administrative irregularities”. About how there had been many discrepancies in her book-keeping for transport services in her capacity as National Coordinator of Tobacco Control of the Ministry of Health. And about how her nonsensical determination to ban the sale of all vaping products was ruled unconstitutional by The Supreme Court of Justice in Panama.

We owe our readers an apology. It is clear that we over-estimated her competence by a significant degree. 

There are many ways to embarrass your country on the world stage. You can forget an ally’s name at a press conference. You can mistake one country for another. Or, if you’re Dr. Roa, the incoming President of the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) Secretariat no less, you can accuse the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of being under the thumb of Big Tobacco.

This is the same FDA that regulates everything from chemotherapy drugs to breakfast cereal in the United States. The same FDA whose rulings move global markets. According to Dr. Roa, their years of rigorous scientific assessments on reduced-risk nicotine products are not to be trusted. Because, apparently, the fairies at the bottom of the WHO’s garden told her so.

In an official note, Roa declared that “there is no independent scientific consensus not affiliated with the tobacco industry confirming that [less harmful nicotine products authorised for sale in the US] pose a substantially lower risk.” A remarkable statement, considering dozens of state-funded government institutions in Western countries which, to be charitable, are technologically more advanced than tinpot territory Panama have all said exactly the opposite. But why let facts get in the way when you can wave away decades of research with just a wink and a smile? 

The problem is that when you’re about to preside over COP11, the world’s most important tobacco control conference, your job is to lead with objectivity, scientific credibility, and diplomatic tact. Instead, Roa has chosen to baselessly undermine one of the world’s most respected regulators and force Panama’s health ministry into damage control before she has even chosen the seat on her first class flight to Geneva.

The diplomatic fallout writes itself. 

This isn’t leadership, it’s performance comedic art. Roa was supposed to set the tone for constructive global debate on tobacco control. Instead, she has tossed a grenade into her own trench and set herself up to write the definitive account of how to lose international respect and throw her country into the brainless basket where credibility dies. 

If this is the standard of international statesmanship we can expect, COP11 won’t look like a serious health conference. It will more resemble a reality show where bozos are on the stage and serious government delegations wonder what other humiliating ignorance they will be forced to endure.

#COP11 documents

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COP11 creeps closer

The eleventh session of the Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) will be held in Geneva from 17 to 22 November 2025. Once again Copwatch will be monitoring the official channels, in our self appointed mission to demystify the workings of the FCTC Conference of the Parties (COP). Will this be the COP where FCTC drags itself into the 21st century, and stops denying harm reduction for people who smoke? Copwatch is sorry to report that the signs aren’t good.    

The workings of FCTC COP can seem mystifying, so we would like to take this opportunity to point you towards some of the explainers on this site. The articles are not recent but that’s ok, because one of the secrets of FCTC COP is that little ever happens. A quick read of these should get you up to speed: 

What is FCTC COP?

What’s wrong with FCTC COP?

Glossary 

The COP11  documents 

A few of the documents for November are already up on the COP11 website. Documents will be added up to 60 days before the meeting opens, although it is not unheard of for documents to appear after that deadline. This page is where the documents should appear. (COP documents sometimes get posted in odd places or get moved, but we do our best to keep track.)  

The Provisional Agenda
Of the documents already posted, the Provisional agenda is the most interesting. Agenda item 4.5 signals that the FCTC Secretariat is doubling down on their opposition to harm reduction for smoking:

Copwatch has some thoughts on this…

  • Why are there quote marks around the phrase harm reduction, in 4.5? Does harm reduction only exist in marketing campaigns – what about the harm reduction experience of the millions of us who used to smoke?
  • Why is there no reference to the FCTC’s Article 1(d), which explicitly states that harm reduction is a pillar of tobacco control?   
  • Instead, Article 5.2(b) and 5.3 are referred to – signalling that the Secretariat wishes Parties to discuss harm reduction as a threat – not an opportunity – for tobacco control. Here is the relevant part of Article 5: 

From Article 5, Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, 2003

From this we infer that the Secretariat is hell bent on not only ignoring the lived experiences of millions of consumers, but also ignoring the multiple calls from countries at COP10 for harm reduction to be recognized as a pillar of tobacco control. It seems that the Secretariat has responded to these calls by including harm reduction on the agenda, but to be considered as a threat. We wonder how some of the sovereign parties will view that, during the discussions at COP11. 

A shame that we have no chance of getting admitted to observe those proceedings – observer status to FCTC COP has never yet been granted to any group representing people who smoke or those who use safer nicotine products to stop.