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.