Category: Topical

The WHO vs. The Tiny Mint Pillow of Doom

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How the world’s leading health bureaucracy produced over 100 pages of panic and forgot about smoking

The World Health Organization has released a new report on nicotine pouches titled “Exposing marketing tactics and strategies driving the global growth of nicotine pouches.” Unfortunately, after wading through dozens of pages of bureaucratic alarmism, a simpler title that might have been more accurate is “Everything We Hate About People Using Nicotine.”

The report is a masterpiece of modern public health absurdity. It manages to discuss flavours, fonts, influencers, social media, branding, youth trends, marketing psychology, regulatory loopholes (aka businesses complying with the law), nicotine concentrations, sponsorships, and “lifestyle positioning” while somehow ignoring the central scientific fact that nicotine pouches are orders of magnitude less harmful than smoking cigarettes. 

But science seems to have wandered out of the building along with Elvis somewhere around page three.

Instead, readers are treated to a kind of nicotine-themed ghost story in which fruit flavours and sleek packaging threaten to “renormalise nicotine use” and unravel decades of tobacco control progress. You half expect the next WHO briefing to warn that using a nicotine pouch may also summon ancient demons or destabilise the Earth’s magnetic field.

The report’s preferred policy options are as subtle as a brick and as well thought-out as using a sieve to bail out a sinking boat. Governments are encouraged either to ban nicotine pouches outright or regulate them into oblivion through flavour bans, nicotine caps, plain packaging, advertising prohibitions, and restrictions so extensive they would make a third world dictator blush (no offence, Dr Tedros). 

Curiously missing is any serious engagement with the growing body of evidence that smoke free nicotine products dramatically reduce harm compared to cigarettes. The WHO does not meaningfully discuss the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorisations for oral nicotine products. It avoids the inconvenient Swedish experience almost entirely, despite Sweden having the lowest smoking rate and among the lowest smoking-related death rates in Europe thanks largely to oral nicotine use.

That omission is especially comic given that Sweden is precisely the sort of real world public health success story international health agencies are supposed to celebrate. Swedish men have dramatically lower rates of smoking related cancers and cardiovascular disease compared to much of Europe thanks to a permissive policy over oral nicotine, but that doesn’t fit the narrative the WHO is paid to wants to convey. 

Instead, the report reads like an instruction manual for how to protect cigarettes from competition. That may sound unfair until you consider the practical outcome of the WHO’s recommendations. Cigarettes remain widely available almost everywhere in the world, sold in supermarkets, gas stations, and convenience stores. Meanwhile, the products that threaten the cigarette trade most effectively are the ones the WHO demands are banned, regulated to extinction, and subject to relentless public misinformation campaigns.

The WHO is beginning to resemble a cartel protection racket for combustible tobacco, which is appropriate seeing as, in many countries, it is criminal gangs who are eagerly filling the void created by WHO-endorsed policymaking (hello, Australia!). The organization insists it is fighting Big Tobacco while systematically undermining innovations that could eradicate cigarette sales. 

The report fusses endlessly about nicotine pouch growth in countries such as Germany. The small problem is that nicotine pouches are banned there already. Which means the booming market the WHO cites as evidence of danger has been created despite exactly the kind of policy the WHO endorses. Surely an important detail which should have been picked up when the document was reviewed.

Likewise, countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands have seen burgeoning illegal trade despite prohibitions and restrictions. Police seize quantities of illicit nicotine pouches while shops continue selling them anyway. The WHO observes all this with the confused mentality of someone throwing petrol on a house fire and wondering why the flames keep getting bigger.

Most telling of all is the report’s obsession with “renormalisation” of nicotine use. This word appears so frequently that you wonder if WHO officials have ever looked around them when leaving their offices. Nicotine has been used, normally, for thousands of years. You’d think a global health agency may have noticed. 

The tragedy here is that the WHO was once an institution capable of leading genuine public health progress. Today it increasingly resembles an ideological cult suggesting a nicotine purity test where all forms of nicotine are treated as equally sinister regardless of scientific evidence.

The WHO claims it aims to reduce tobacco-related harm. Increasingly, however, its lucratively-funded policy suggestions, as shown in this latest report, are helping to perpetuate it. Nice work if you can get it!

Awards, Outrage, and the Sound of Pots Meeting Kettles

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The COP11 Truth-Avoiding Performance in Geneva

The WHO’s eleventh Conference of the Parties (COP11) shuffled to a close in Geneva on 22 November with a result that can only be described as deeply unsatisfactory, to a very specific group of people. The most damaging proposals towards less harmful nicotine products such as vapes, heated tobacco and pouches failed to secure consensus, and from the wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed, it is clear that the mostly Bloomberg-funded NGOs who had been pushing hardest against harm reduction products were not best pleased.

What followed has been a masterclass in desperate deflection. Instead of accepting that national delegations, representing elected governments no less, simply refused to rubber-stamp policies they found extreme, unworkable, or lethal, the blame was swiftly redirected. Industry, apparently, was responsible for everything.

When a report appeared in the Tobacco Control Journal solemnly declaring COP11 a success, it was difficult to take it seriously. According to this account, the only reason certain agenda items failed was dastardly industry interference, not, heaven forbid, because those ideas were absurd, ethically indefensible, and likely to cost hundreds of thousands of lives had they been implemented. Also, it was somewhat  jaw-dropping for the authors to warn ominously about “external influence” while every one of them was employed by heavily funded anti–harm reduction organisations which had proposed the agenda items in the first place. Pots and kettles do not merely come to mind, they are so prevalent that one could form an orchestra with them. One wonders how the authors could keep a straight face while submitting it for publication.

This is a convenient story if one prefers to ignore the uncomfortable reality that COP decisions are made by Parties, not by the unelected FCTC Secretariat. And certainly not by NGOs whose influence is driven by hefty donations from private philanthropy.

Then there were the awards. New Zealand, a country whose harm reduction policies have helped more than halve smoking rates in just a few years, was presented with the first “Dirty Ashtray” award of the event. Mexico, a nation battling violent drug cartels, received the Orchid award.

Together, these choices suggested that the Bloomberg-funded Global Alliance on Tobacco Control (GATC) had finally disappeared into the warm, echoing depths of its own ideology. The notion that New Zealand is only pretending that its policies are successful requires such heroic mental contortions that one wonders whether a neurological medical team should be on standby. When outcomes contradict ideology, it seems the outcomes must be wrong.

Still, COP11 was not without its silver linings. One of the most encouraging developments was the growing number of Parties openly expressing frustration at being sidelined. In their opening statements, several delegations called for greater involvement in FCTC treaty work between COPs, a diplomatic way of saying they are tired of being locked out while decisions are shaped elsewhere. Their displeasure was clearly directed at a Secretariat and a cluster of Bloomberg-funded NGOs that appear increasingly comfortable acting as gatekeepers and usurping the Parties’ authority. That governments are beginning to notice and object can only be healthy.

The interference of heavily-conflicted NGOs at COP meetings is also being noticed by more people. David Zaruk of The Firebreak published a meticulous investigation, Mapping Bloomberg’s Billions Against Tobacco Harm Reduction, which examined the 29 WHO-approved civil society organisations admitted to the conference. Released on the morning of day two, its timing could not have been better. Delegates suddenly had a roadmap of who was in the room, who was paying them, and why the chorus sounded so eerily in tune.

So, considering the GATC accused New Zealand of pretending its policies were successful, let us talk about pretence. How can any Bloomberg-funded organisation be serious about claiming COP11 wasn’t a propaganda exercise given the participant list was littered with organisations given huge sums of money to parrot the personal whims of one American billionaire?

Among the NGOs present were the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids with 31 delegates, the European Network for Smoking Prevention with 38, the Smoke-free Partnership, 10, the University of Bath, 12, Vital Strategies, 6, and the GATC with a staggering 61 delegates.

And representing people with lived experience of smoking or quitting using consumer products? Not a single organisation. Not one. Apparently, the voices of those most affected by these policies are only to be heard at a distance, preferably from outside the building.

The European Union delegation added its own form of anti-democratic dogma to the spectacle. Leaks suggested that Denmark and the European Commission were quietly pursuing bans on vapes and nicotine pouches just one week after EU Member States had agreed a common COP11 position that did not call for global bans on safer nicotine products. The resulting recriminations have been remarkable. Reading about EU representatives attempting to throw elected member state governments under the bus to protect a deeply entrenched anti–harm reduction stance has been staggering. One can only wonder what irresistible force drove this sudden urge to protect cigarettes. Surely it couldn’t be something as crude as anxiety over declining tobacco tax revenues as Europeans quit smoking en masse? Perish the thought.

The conference concluded on a note that felt almost inevitable under the circumstances. The president of COP11 closed proceedings by incorrectly referring to novel nicotine products as bringing “disability and death.” It was a fitting finale. Cult-like disinformation delivered confidently from the podium by one of the true believers. 

The last word must go to Clive Bates, who captured the moment in a tweet that perfectly summed up the administration of COP11.

A macabre spectacle of arrogance and ineptitude, indeed. On that, at least, we can find consensus.

Philanthro-Colonialism to Be On Display at COP11

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Let Indigenous populations make their own decisions

Following on from the previous COPWatch article about the side events to be held during breaks at COP11 (downloadable at this page), attention was drawn to a side event scheduled for the afternoon of Thursday 20th November; one which reeks of Western interference towards approaches which are working in indigenous populations.

Organised by Australia, “Implementing the WHO FCTC: Indigenous Leadership, Equity, and Community-Driven Solutions”, is quietly buried in the schedule. The only event acknowledging Indigenous leadership in tobacco control, you would expect the session to recognise the value of community-led, culturally grounded approaches. You would also expect it to highlight truth-telling and lived experience, concepts that Western NGOs love to cite but never practice when it threatens their authority. 

Sadly, our hopes aren’t that high. We anticipate that instead, it will perform a ritual of denunciation, condemning any view that challenges the WHO’s abstinence-only nicotine doctrine, as blessed by their financial patron.

COP11 exposes a grim reality that global health circles rarely admit. What should be an inclusive conversation about saving lives has instead become a showcase of philanthropic imperialism. Bloomberg Philanthropies and its network of paid mouthpieces have captured the global tobacco control narrative, turning harm reduction into heresy and Indigenous self-determination into a side note.

This imbalance is not an accident. It is the direct result of Bloomberg’s philanthropic empire, which has spent more than a billion dollars imposing its moral worldview on the Global South. Under the banner of charity, this empire dictates policy to entire nations, rewarding compliance and punishing deviation. Harm reduction advocates are branded as industry puppets, while compliant NGOs receive endless funding and access. This is not public health. It is colonialism repackaged as benevolence.

For Indigenous peoples, this interference cuts deep. Harm reduction is not about protecting corporations, it is about reclaiming autonomy. Many Indigenous communities face disproportionate harm from combustible tobacco. Safer nicotine alternatives, introduced on their own cultural and regulatory terms, offer a way to reduce disease without repeating the paternalism of the past. Yet Bloomberg’s network insists on denying these communities the right to choose their own path. They are told, once again, that Western experts know best.

This is philanthropic colonialism in its purest form. A wealthy foreign power dictating morality to poorer nations and Indigenous peoples under the pretext of saving them. The rhetoric of “protecting youth” and “defeating industry interference” has become a convenient cover for silencing inconvenient truths and suppressing local agency.

If the WHO FCTC truly values equity and participation, it must recognize the hypocrisy of allowing billionaire-backed NGOs to dominate the conversation while Indigenous voices are tokenized and marginalized. Harm reduction, when guided by communities rather than donors, is not an industry tool, it is liberation.

At COP11, the world will hear much about saving lives and protecting health. But unless it confronts the corrosive influence of philanthropic colonialism, those promises will remain hollow. The fight for tobacco harm reduction is no longer just about nicotine, it is about sovereignty, truth, and the right of Indigenous peoples to chart their own path to wellness.

Dubiously Funded NGOs Queue Up to Mislead COP11 Delegates

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Published side events are a masterclass in manipulation

The FCTC Secretariat has published the schedule for side events to be held during breaks at COP11 (It is downloadable at this page). As you might expect, they promise to be a masterclass in manipulation. 

Nearly every session that mentions harm reduction is run or co-organized by Bloomberg-funded bodies who share not only funding but also a single script. To ram home the message, the discussion descriptions routinely place the term harm reduction in quote marks to pretend it is a figment of industry imagination rather than a legitimate, evidence-based public health strategy.

The purpose of these events is rather transparent. The dubiously funded NGOs, complete with their clear conflicts of interest, get access to government officials and can lecture them with unadulterated nonsense because anyone who might criticize them is not allowed in the room.

The sessions kick off with an event organised by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK), the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), and the Global Alliance for Tobacco Control (GATC), all of whom enjoy lavish funding from a prominent American billionaire we could mention. It claims it will be “unmasking” industry interference which uses “the language of “harm reduction” to promote novel nicotine products.” They intend to do so via the medium of “youth-led advocacy”, or in other words, feeding lines to kids to parrot to their captured audience. 

It is a classic of its genre to start the disinformation avalanche. All the WHO’s manufactured hobgoblins delivered to delegates out of the mouths of babes to minimize the chances of anyone objecting. The fact that many times more adults than youth use safer nicotine products to help them quit smoking will not be mentioned. 

On Tuesday, an event organised by the WHO will blur the delegates’ understanding of the policy area by describing “how flavours in tobacco, nicotine and related products” create more attractive products by “masking the harsh taste of tobacco.” Quite how this works with nicotine products which contain no tobacco and, therefore, have no tobacco taste to start with, is not explained.

Immediately after comes a session organised by CTFK and the University of Bath, both recipients of millions of dollars of Bloomberg funding, which “will explore how the tobacco industry uses the concept of “harm reduction” to preserve its market interests, shape public perception and influence policy in its favor”. Naturally, they won’t declare their own conflicts of interest or how being funded by one of the world’s most fanatical anti-nicotine advocates helps to preserve their own bank accounts and “shape public perception and influence policy” to pursue more grateful financial support in the future. 

Further on Tuesday, the Smokefree Partnership will be organising a discussion on how “the tobacco industry and its front groups are misrepresenting Sweden’s decline in smoking to promote snus and nicotine pouches.” One wonders what it has to do with the Smokefree Partnership considering snus and pouches are, indeed, smokefree. But they are just part of the groupthink agenda. It is awkward for harm reduction deniers that Sweden has recently become smokefree which is undoubtedly due to it being the only country in the European Union which is permitted to sell snus. This, despite other countries having implemented more traditional tobacco control policies which nicotine prohibitionists claim to be the reason for success. The Swedish government disagrees, but the FCTC doesn’t want to listen to governments anymore, as we commented recently.  

Wednesday begins with two more Bloomberg-funded entities, the WHO FCTC Knowledge Hub and GGTC teaming up with the Maldives, the FCTC’s latest poster child having recently banned possession of all nicotine products for everyone, including tourists, forever. They will discuss how “the tobacco industry uses “harm reduction” claims to promote new nicotine products, shape regulation and weaken the safeguards of Article 5.3”. Haven’t we heard that one already? Yes, it is almost the exact wording of a discussion sponsored by CTFK and the University of Bath the day before. 

Well, Joseph Goebbels did say that lies should be repeated for them to become the truth, so they are only following the propaganda playbook. 

Laughably, Australia is co-organising an event on the Wednesday entitled “Preventing uptake of e-cigarettes” which promises to “provide practical insights and lessons learned to support stronger protection against e-cigarette use.” It would be a good bet to assume that the problem of more than 200 firebombings and an out of control black market will be quietly ignored. 

With the side events front-loaded to mirror the aggressive nature of the COP11 agenda against harm reduction and guide delegations towards following Michael Bloomberg’s the WHO’s line on the issue, proceedings culminate with a plea for “Accelerating Article 14 Implementation.” This is the FCTC article which demands Parties “facilitate accessibility and affordability for treatment of tobacco dependence including pharmaceutical products.” After all, considering the prior aggressive rhetoric about the harms of nicotine, the delegates will need to be reminded that nicotine is apparently fine when delivered by the correct WHO corporate partners. 

We can only hope that delegates will be able to see through the WHO’s Bloomberg-funded festival of untruths and realise that recreational nicotine use is not going away anytime soon, however much the FCTC authorities might wish it possible. 

Still, we should give them some credit. It takes real creativity to plan a program of events which turn a conference designed to reduce harm from smoking into one which is desperate to protect cigarettes from all competition.

Desperate FCTC Grandees Now Following the Anti-Vaxxer Playbook

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The echo chamber becomes ever more enclosed

As the next Conference of the Parties meeting (COP11) approaches next week, planned activities arranged by the FCTC Secretariat are becoming increasingly unhinged. 

Faced with overwhelming evidence that their anti-nicotine at all costs policy is failing badly, the goal, it seems, is to construct a wall of misinformation to hoodwink national delegations into promoting policies which would be detrimental to the health of their citizens, by way of using Brandolini’s Law to their advantage. 

Those not familiar with this law may know it better as the “bullshit asymmetry principle”, described as “the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”

Anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists have long benefitted from this method of so-called debate. Simply peddle falsehoods to a gullible audience and watch the truth struggle to attract similar levels of publicity. Actively following their lead is the only credible explanation for a ministerial roundtable event arranged by the FCTC Secretariat for lunchtime on the first day of the COP11 conference. And to amplify the bullshit to its maximum extent, the WHO has mobilized its big guns of global disinformation.

You may remember Emily Banks from such masterful pieces of misdirection as her “flawed and misleading” review of vaping which “omitted important information, made critical scientific flaws and did not achieve its objective of providing an accurate analysis of the available scientific information.” Perfect for presenting bullshit for the FCTC, then. 

Mr Vandenbrouke is the Belgian who created an illicit market in his country by banning nicotine pouches, described by the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment as 99% less harmful than smoking cigarettes. His reason for doing so was because he claimed they were a “stepping stone” to smoking for which there is, naturally, no evidence whatsoever. He also wants vaping flavours banned, despite policy experts finding that they are “positively related to smokers’ transition away from cigarettes.” 

With such heavyweights in the art of presenting evidence-free opinions duly assembled by the FCTC authorities, let’s look at the lowlights we can expect during the roundtable discussion. 

The blurb, downloadable from the WHO event page, promises to discuss how “the evidence in respect of these products does not support the conclusion that they are effective for cessation at the population level.” How odd. Maybe we dreamed up the Cochrane living review finding “high certainty evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes are more effective than traditional nicotine-replacement therapy (NRT) in helping people quit smoking.”

Instead, claim the event organisers, “evidence is mounting regarding their harmful impact on public health.” An attempt to create the feeling of momentum when the only direction of travel is illustrating that alternative nicotine products don’t kill people and smoking reduces rapidly when they are made readily available. 

Attendees will be regaled as to how “the World Health Organization has repeatedly underscored the urgency of comprehensive regulation of all nicotine products, not just traditional tobacco.” Not strictly true, is it? The FCTC was written in 2003 when non-tobacco nicotine products had barely been invented.   

In fact, the WHO itself advised delegates at COP7 in India in 2016 that “If the great majority of tobacco smokers who are unable or unwilling to quit would switch without delay to using an alternative source of nicotine with lower health risks … this would represent a significant contemporary public health achievement.”

But that was before the WHO took huge amounts of funding from Michael Bloomberg to concentrate on banning nicotine products instead of focusing on public health. So, the new position is trying to pretend that this was their policy all along. Similar to “we have always been at war with Eastasia”, a statement used in the novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, to illustrate the power of propaganda to manipulate history and public perception.

The meeting description culminates with a quote from Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, who says “without bold action, the global tobacco epidemic, already killing around 8 million people each year, will continue to be driven by addiction dressed up with appealing flavors.” Because banning nicotine products which are orders of magnitude less harmful, while leaving cigarettes legal and protected from competition by the WHO is a surefire way of stopping smokers dying, isn’t it? 

The audience for this discussion will include the cherry picked NGOs, faithful cult followers of the echo chamber, who will lap up this woeful diatribe of fantasy ignorance like a 9/11 truther laps up theories about holograms hitting the twin towers in 2001 instead of Boeing 757s. Those who might refute the bullshit or offer a different interpretation are, as always, banned from the building. 

On this evidence, maybe at COP12 they’ll just skip attempting to be evidence-led entirely and consult a horoscope instead.

FCTC bureaucrats have decided national delegations just get in the way

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Who needs elected governments anyway?

Before our next foray into the intentions of the FCTC Secretariat at the upcoming COP11 conference to be held in Geneva in November, it is worth just reiterating what the acronym COP actually means. To do this, COPWatch directs you to one of our first explainer articles from four years ago.

Note the “decision makers are national governments” part. This is because COP stands for “Conference of the Parties” which means the (unelected) administrators of the FCTC treaty should be presenting objective options and then sitting back and letting the Parties (representatives of elected national governments) decide what happens next. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to COP11 agenda item 4.4 concerning “Regulation of contents and disclosure of tobacco products” (Articles 9 & 10), the FCTC Secretariat seems to have forgotten that fundamental principle of the treaty.

Up until 2018, an open working group deliberated on product content and emissions testing using up-to-date science, until the FCTC authorities suspended it. WHO surveys in 2020 and 2021 found that most Parties wanted the group reinstated, not replaced by a closed “expert group” handpicked by the Secretariat. Despite this clear majority on two separate occasions, the WHO claimed there was “little support” for reactivation and instead sided with the minority by recommending its own controlled expert panel.

Parties mandated a working group more than 15 years ago, but the Secretariat convinced everyone that an expert group would make more progress. Yet since they did so, there has been no progress whatsoever.

At COP10, this led to a stalemate when articles 9 & 10 were discussed. The subject was debated to such an extent that other agenda items had to be shunted to a different committee due to time constraints. After a full six days of deadlock, no decision could be made and the subject had to be adjourned to COP11. 

The FCTC Secretariat would surely have to finally bend to the will of the Parties and reinstall a working group, wouldn’t it? Not a bit of it. Instead, the FCTC Bureau has recommended deferring the establishment of either an expert group or a working group. They’d rather just handle the discussion on their own. 

Article 5.4 of the treaty dictates that Parties “shall cooperate in the formulation of proposed measures, procedures and guidelines for the implementation of the Convention” but that seems to now have been abandoned.

Who needs the Parties to make decisions anyway? They just get in the way of what the FCTC administrators want to do. 

So, the FCTC lanyard class have now decided to redirect financial resources to what they call “capacity building” for the implementation of Articles 9 and 10. This involves secret discussions with carefully selected entities (most likely compliant NGOs) to achieve the Secretariat’s goals of banning flavours, implementing plain packaging of all nicotine products, and prohibiting anything that might hint that some nicotine products are less harmful than smoking. 

After all, those Parties might (as they did at COP10) disagree with what the FCTC authorities wish to do, and that just isn’t acceptable. 

Perhaps the upcoming COP should more accurately be termed the “Conference of the Bureaucrats” because if national governments allow themselves to be cut out of the conversation so blatantly, they may as well not bother even turning up in future.

The expert group with little expertise

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How your taxes fund jobs for the WHO’s chums

Our attention was drawn to a rather unusual expert group convened to provide recommendations for COP agenda item 4.3 concerning “Protection of the environment and the health of persons.” 

We were eager to learn more about the personnel involved in this expert group. They are named in the supplementary “Regulatory options” report which is located in the Supplementary documents area on the COP11 website. We found that 25 individuals were involved in producing the document, either as authors, contributors or external reviewers.

Those producing such a comprehensive report on environmental matters for a global health authority such as the WHO must surely be a who’s who of prominent environmental researchers. A veritable stellar list of big name heavy-hitters.

It was disappointing, then, to discover that out of the 25 names, only two had ever published a research paper on environmental matters. Out of the three research items they have produced between them, one focused on “Neanderthal environments in Portugal” and another was a master’s thesis on “exposure to benzene in industrial cities.”

Not one of the eight external reviewers has any environmental science credentials whatsoever, nor have eight of the authors and contributors. And none are listed as specialists in ecotoxicology, waste-management engineering, life-cycle assessment, marine pollution, or environmental chemistry. The disciplines normally required for the report’s subject matter.

In fact, the expert group is dominated by tobacco-control and legal advocates, not environmental scientists, so it is a misnomer to call it an “expert” group at all. 

But perhaps it doesn’t matter. Far from being a serious academic attempt to align tobacco control with the environmental movement, the report just reverts to traditional tobacco control rhetoric about prohibitive measures such as banning cigarette filters and disposable vapes, outdoor smoking bans, and reducing the number of shops selling tobacco and nicotine products. 

Regular readers will know that expert group members are selected by the Convention Secretariat rather than chosen by national governments, so mostly comprise NGO activists sympathetic to the Secretariat’s ideology (Working groups, by contrast, are much more democratic as they are selected by national governments – funnily enough, there appear to be no current working groups at FCTC COP).

It is no surprise, therefore, that no one in this group is talking about scientific evidence, the incidence of trade-offs, or considering unintended outcomes, and there’s certainly no effort to connect their ideas to any coherent environmental or waste policy.

It seems that if you are “in” with the WHO, you are eligible for “jobs for the boys” in any expert group, no matter how non-existent your policy expertise actually is.

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.

146 Conflicts of Interest

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Coming to a COP conference near you soon.

Vital Strategies, one of the favored misinformation outlets funded with money from the World’s greatest opponent of reduced risk nicotine products, Michael Bloomberg, recently sent out a newsletter to subscribers.

Among calls to demand countries implement a “50% tax increase on harmful commodities like tobacco, alcohol and sugary drinks” which will punish the poor, the newsletter also celebrated “the recipients of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Awards for Global Tobacco Control.” These are they, 146 of them.

The organization warned that “newer nicotine and tobacco products”, that is, the ones which are helping people quit smoking, “are rapidly gaining ground” and that they are all willing and able to stop that from happening. 

The newsletter boasted that these “changemakers” have been fully trained (and funded) to go out into the wider world and bludgeon poor people into being poorer people for the sin of enjoying consumer products Mr. Bloomberg doesn’t like.

They will also have been brainwashed to believe that reducing harm for users of nicotine is a bad thing. Despite there being a highly-contested debate about the benefits or otherwise of tobacco harm reduction, none will venture a different perspective for fear of their grant money disappearing.

As usual, there was no declaration from Vital Strategies that all of those pictured have a significant conflict of interest (as does Vital Strategies itself). By accepting money from someone who refuses to balance the evidence surrounding reduced harm products, and who actively encourages messaging and programs which deliberately misinform the public, they should be disqualified from having any say in policymaking at all. One might describe it as political interference.

No doubt, many of these will also appear at COP11 in Geneva later this year. They will be united and speak as one, promoting the vested interests of a single ill-informed and unaccountable American billionaire. This is what buying governments looks like.

The WHO likes to peddle the notion that they are transparent, but this one picture proves that to be a fantasy. Are delegates at Framework Convention on Tobacco Control meetings aware of just how many observers at these meetings are essentially proxies for one unelected person, Michael Bloomberg? 

Copwatchers need only glance at the lists of accredited observers to COP10 to see that Bloomberg funded organizations dominate. At the same time, not one group representing people who smoke or who consume nicotine is allowed any access to delegations to put their case.

Here’s a thought. If attendees at WHO COP meetings want to claim to be transparent, perhaps they should insist that official observers at COP report their funding and the ideology of those who are funding them. 

It is the exact point of the concept of declaring a conflict of interest, after all.

WHO Cares? Apparently Not the World Health Organization

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Criminal accusations? No problem when you’re a member of our club.

If you’ve ever wondered what it actually takes to get suspended from the World Health Organization, rest easy. It’s definitely not alleged fraud, forgery, or being the subject of an active arrest warrant. 

Let’s talk about Saima Wazed who is currently presiding over official events as the WHO’s Regional Director for South-East Asia. That’s impressive. Especially considering that back in her home country of Bangladesh, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has filed not one, but two cases against her for fraud, forgery, and abuse of power, all tied to her campaign for that very WHO role.

And, in a bold demonstration of just how little the WHO seems to care about minor details such as being wanted by authorities, Wazed even issued an official statement on behalf of the WHO South-East Asia region on May 31st, while the warrant for her arrest was still active.

In any normal institution, your workplace, your school, or your local golf club, this sort of thing would warrant, at the very least, a stern email and a suspension. But at the WHO, it’s apparently just another normal day.

When asked about it, the WHO delivered a standard response which was as weak as days old dishwater. “We do not comment on such investigations or any consequential legal processes while they are ongoing”, it said, which is code for “We’ll do nothing and hope you stop asking.”

But should we be surprised? This is the same organization that once appointed Robert Mugabe, the late Zimbabwean dictator, as a Goodwill Ambassador. Because nothing says “health and goodwill” like ordering citizens to be massacred and declaring that homosexuals are “worse than dogs and pigs”.

Then there was Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General who skipped a critical meeting about the Ebola outbreak to have a cozy tea session in Moscow with Vladimir Putin just months after Russia shot down flight MH17, killing 298 people. Ebola could wait, diplomacy with despots clearly couldn’t.

And if you think the satire ends there, buckle up. In 2023, North Korea was elected to the WHO’s Executive Board. That’s right, the hermit kingdom that considers running water a luxury is now helping shape global health policy.

So really, Saima Wazed’s ongoing involvement with the WHO, despite active fraud investigations and an arrest warrant, doesn’t raise eyebrows. At this point, the WHO is less a public health authority and more of a real-life international political satire, with a rotating cast of questionable characters.

What next? Will the WHO appoint El Chapo as Special Envoy for Pharmaceutical Logistics, perhaps?

Because, if history is anything to go by, the WHO seems far less interested in integrity than in optics. And it’s happy to stand by as its officials are dog-paddling through legal scandals, as long as they show up to press conferences with a lanyard and a smile.

Perhaps it’s time to update the WHO’s mission statement to reflect its real operating principles. “The WHO: Turning a blind eye, plugging both ears, and humming loudly is our strength.”