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.
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.
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.
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.
Articles 9 and 10 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control cover the regulation of contents and disclosure of tobacco products. This will be discussed at the upcoming COP11 under agenda item 4.4.
This article looks at some of the documents associated with this thorny agenda item, seeking enlightenment on why there has been so little progress.
Key documents for COP11 agenda item 4.4
The documents which delegates are invited to consider are a report authored by the Bureau (FCTC/COP/11/8) and a report authored by WHO (FCTC/COP/11/9). More on those later.
Keen readers will notice that the guidelines for addictiveness and toxicity have not yet been developed:
From page four ‘Partial guidelines for implementation of Articles 9 and 10’
If developed – and, if developed without reliance on junk science – those guidelines would highlight the significant differences in risk between combusted and toxic oral products and the non combusted and far less harmful oral products.
Here’s a graph which illustrates those stark differences in risk:
Murkett R, Rugh M and Ding B. Nicotine products relative risk assessment: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis [version 2; peer review: 1 approved, 1 approved with reservations]. F1000Research 2022, 9:1225 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.26762.2)
According to the regulatory principle of risk proportionality, the less harmful products (snus, nicotine pouches, vapes, heated tobacco products) should be regulated less stringently than the far more harmful combusted and toxic oral products. However, that would not fit the WHO and the FCTC secretariat’s prohibitionist mindset, which favours harsh regulation for all consumer nicotine products, regardless of the harms.
Also relevant is this recent paper, where scientists call for toxicity reduction to be adopted at COP11:
“Tobacco control has focused on reducing use, with little emphasis on regulating product toxicity. Articles 9 and 10 of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) offer a mechanism to reduce harm by limiting toxic emissions, but implementation has stalled. A science-based regulatory framework is needed to set emission thresholds for toxicants”
“Articles 9 and 10 of the FCTC regulate content, emissions, and tobacco product disclosures, thereby providing a tool through which harm from tobacco use can be reduced. As the partial guidelines for the implementation of Articles 9 and 10 state, “tobacco product regulation has the potential to contribute to reducing tobacco-attributable disease and premature death by reducing the attractiveness of tobacco products, reducing their addictiveness (or dependence liability) or reducing their overall toxicity” (7). However, the partial guidelines have not provided any guidance with respect to the regulation of harmful constituents and emissions even though this was identified by countries as a priority as far back as the first meeting of the FCTC Conference of the Parties (CoP) in 2006 (8)”
It would certainly seem common sense for a treaty focussed on the harms from tobacco use to regulate product toxicity. But this is a huge sticking point for FCTC COP. And, as we reported in last week’s article, the Secretariat is keen to press on and implement the partial guidelines, even if that means defying the Convention by taking control away from the Parties.
The roadblock
The current state of stasis is nicely illustrated by this figure contained on page 3 of the WHO’s report to COP11 (FCTC/COP/11/9)
You’ll notice that progress stalled at COP9 and COP10, where no agreement could be reached. You’ll notice too that those are the COP meetings which saw substantive discussions about the ‘novel and emerging’ products – coincidence, much?
Now for a bit more on those WHO and Bureau reports…
In theory, Articles 9 and 10 only cover tobacco products – and, it’s bad enough that they do, as those include snus and heated tobacco products. WHO is keen to remind COP of this: “It should be emphasized that the guidance provided in earlier COP decisions, including the recommended regulatory measures, should be applied equally to all forms of tobacco products” (page four).
To make matters even worse, this report from WHO includes references to WHO publications where they have recommended stringent regulation for all consumer nicotine products, which would include vapes and nicotine pouches. By implication WHO is suggesting measures for non tobacco containing products – which is not currently mandated by COP. The non exhaustive list of recommended measures includes banning flavours across all products and plain packaging. These would be disastrous for any safer nicotine product.
As Clive Bates writes, in his excellent ‘Commentary on the Annotated Agenda’ (COP11): “the main effect of applying an indiscriminate ban to all products will be to reduce the transition from high-risk to low-risk tobacco products”
The report from the Bureau recommends deferring the establishment or re-establishment of an expert group or working group dedicated to guidelines for implementation of Articles 9 and 10. See our article, ‘FCTC bureaucrats have decided national delegations just get in the way’ for our views on this outrageous denial of the sovereign Parties’ wishes.
The Bureau also recommends redirecting financial resources to capacity building and technical assistance for Parties for the implementation of Articles 9 and 10 and its unfinished partial guidelines. Again, this is astonishing – how can the incomplete guidelines be implemented, if they don’t include guidance agreed by the Parties, especially on areas so fundamental to the treaty?
If agreed, this will give the FCTC Secretariat and the WHO a mandate to support capacity building as they wish – which could include indiscriminate bans or full equalisation of regulation across the risk spectrum.
In short, it is the WHO and FCTC Secretariat’s distaste for harm reduction which has put the brakes on progress with Articles 9 and 10. We hope that Parties will push back and we will not be surprised if COP11 sees another deadlock on this issue.
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.
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.
Earlier this week a bunch of new documents were added to the COP11 website, related to ‘Forward looking tobacco control measures’. What are ‘forward looking tobacco control measures’? What’s in these documents, and who authored them? And, most importantly, what are the implications for tobacco harm reduction? Read on…
The Convention is the floor, not a ceiling!
In the context of the Framework on Tobacco Control, ‘forward looking’ measures are those which go further than what is stipulated in the Convention. Here is a description from a FCTC ‘technical document’:
“The Convention is often characterized as the floor for tobacco control efforts, and not a ceiling. This is highlighted in Article 2.1, which provides that “In order to better protect human health, Parties are encouraged to implement measures beyond those required by this Convention and its protocols, and nothing in these instruments shall prevent a Party from imposing stricter requirements…”. This supports the implementation, at the discretion of Parties, of policies and measures that may not be specified in the Convention, but which are geared towards the objective of continually and substantially reducing tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke.”
Expert Group on forward-looking tobacco control measures
At COP10 it was decided to establish an expert group on ‘forward-looking’ tobacco control measures, to prepare a report to be submitted to COP11. The report will be discussed at the COP11 meeting in Geneva in November, at item 4.1 on the Provisional agenda.
The Expert Group members were selected by the Convention Secretariat – so, regular Copwatch readers will not be shocked to learn that they represent NGO’s who are very anti tobacco harm reduction:
If you only read one, make it this one. Here is where you will find the list of ‘forward-looking’ measures, listed in Annex 2 (page11). It includes the mandate for the Expert Group (page 6) and a draft decision for COP to adopt, in Annex 3 (page 31). And, there are some sneaky suggestions on how the net could be widened – more on those, later.
This document just lists the references for the sources in the Report.
3 The Expert Group has met three times since COP10. The notes for these meetings are published on the Supplementary Documents section on the COP11 website, here are the links:
A background paper, from the McCabe Centre for Law and Cancer, written in its capacity as the WHO FCTC Knowledge Hub on Legal Challenges. As consumers, we are not particularly interested in this one – but please get in touch if you have read it and you think there’s anything in there which we need to know about.
5. Missing – ‘compilation of information briefs on forward-looking tobacco control measures’
This document is referred to in the report but has yet to appear. However, the measures are all listed in Annex 2, in the Expert Group’s report (see above).
What are the implications for tobacco harm reduction?
The forward looking measures cover tobacco products. However, there is no distinction between the products which cause harm (smoked products) and those which are used to reduce harm – notably snus and heated tobacco products. In addition, there are several suggestions in the Expert Group’s report for extending the measures to cover non tobacco containing nicotine products – we have posted those below.
This week we will be publishing another article on the ‘forward lookers’, with more analysis of the implications for tobacco harm reduction – do keep an eye out for that.
Annex! Not *just* tobacco products – the Expert Group’s suggestions for widening the net
“The present report focuses on tobacco products as defined by the WHO FCTC, in line with the mandate of the Expert Group. Parties may wish to adopt and apply the FLMs to both tobacco and nicotine products, depending on their domestic definitions, and approach to regulation, of those products.” (page 6)
“Effective, systematic monitoring and enforcement are required, particularly as affected cohorts grow older. The risk of product shifting, particularly among young people, could be mitigated by ensuring that sales of all tobacco and nicotine products are subject to the policy.” (page 16)
“With the right political will, and with expert and careful development and implementation of the model, any barriers to implementation could probably be overcome. A key consideration is that the implementation of this model, if applied to tobacco products only, could lead to tobacco users switching to nicotine products such as electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) and nicotine pouches. This would mean that their nicotine addiction would be maintained, and the tobacco industry would continue to profit from this addiction, while users face the health, social and economic consequences of their continued addiction.” (page 22)
“As nicotine is a powerfully addictive substance, a regulatory policy that would reduce the nicotine levels in tobacco products could lead to substantial public health benefits from decreases in initiation that would reduce the demand for tobacco and increases in cessation. If implemented across all tobacco products (as well as being considered for nicotine products), this FLM would increase the public health benefits.” (page 24)
“Parties may also consider guiding principles for regulation of flavouring agents and other additives: 1) legislation needs to be comprehensive, to minimize the potential for loopholes; 2) legislation needs to be flexible enough to adapt to developments and for changes to be made easily; and 3) to the extent possible, legislation should apply across all tobacco products (and nicotine and related products), to avoid consumer switching and thus undermining of the impact of the policy.” (page 26)
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.
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:
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 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.
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.
