Tag: WHOFCTC

COPWATCH #COP10 articles

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Here is a list of Copwatch’s #COP10 articles, listed with the most recent first.

7 November
Even bigger big trouble in little Panama
“The upshot is that, with less than 2 weeks to go, the WHO has booked a convention centre in which to hold COP10 but has no-one to organise it. Delegates may be arriving in Panama City all dressed up but with nowhere to go.”

3 November
FCTC: Does it work? #COP10
“This supplementary document does a far better job than the ‘main document’(10/4) in describing progress made against the ultimate objective, which is to reduce death and disease from smoking.”

31 October
Another anonymously-written WHO paper is misleading Parties to #COP10
“Two weeks ago, Copwatch drew attention to an anonymously-written paper designed to gaslight Parties at COP10 about disposable vapes. There is a similar attempt at gaslighting going on with a second document in the same series, this time on nicotine pouches.”

27 October
Human rights alert at #COP10
“The FCTC Secretariat is working behind the scenes to impose a narrow view on human rights and tobacco within the UN system and amongst countries (the Parties to the Convention).” 

25 October
A vaper’s call to the delegations to #COP10
“Here we publish a powerful plea from a vaper in the Philippines to the delegates who will be meeting at COP10 in Panama next month.”

23 October
FCTC budget: nice work if you can get it
Here Copwatch brings you what you need to know about the COP10 documents relating to the FCTC budget. This covers three documents:  FCTC/COP/10/17, FCTC/COP/10/18, FCTC/COP/10/19 Rev.1

16 October
The WHO publishes anonymously-written papers designed to gaslight Parties at COP10
Copwatch has detailed many instances of the WHO and FCTC Secretariat playing fast and loose with evidence or cherry-picking research to suit its anti-harm reduction agenda. It is unscientific and shameful but nothing we have not seen before. But two new reports, on disposable vapes and nicotine pouches, have been published on a separate page to the main COP10 menu which seem specifically designed to mislead COP10 delegates based on nothing more than opinion.

10 October
COP10 documents guide: FCTC/COP/10/4
“Produced by the Convention Secretariat, the subject for the report is ‘Global progress in implementation of the WHO FCTC’.”

28 September
Alternative reading list for #COP10 delegates 
COPWATCHERS will notice that tobacco harm reduction is absent from the official documents, with no consideration given to the opportunities offered by safer nicotine products.   Here we have compiled a list of articles to round off the COP10 delegates’ education.

24 August
#COP10 documents guide: FCTC/COP/10/9
“Having airily skipped over the yawning chasm of missing research that they were supposed to have gathered on heated tobacco in just four pages, the FCTC/COP/10/9 document then spends the rest of the 18 pages discussing what bans and restrictions should be put in place.”

18 August
More trouble in little Panama
“In June, Copwatch mentioned, in passing, that a series of nationwide protests and blockades had taken place in COP10 host country, Panama, recently. Cost-of-living concerns, mistrust of government officials, poverty, inequality and corruption have led to much discontent.”

7 August
#COP10 documents guide: FCTC/COP/10/7
“The one where the WHO denies quitting smoking is quitting smoking, and other daydreaming”

3 August
The WHO releases new report on the ‘tobacco epidemic’ and how to maintain it
“Cynical people (unlike those at Copwatch, of course) might assume that there is some cherry-picking going on for inclusion of evidence for the report, while Bloomberg’s anti-nicotine minions are given pay-to-play access to write it”

31 July
The road to FCTC #COP10
“Going from the agenda we can expect a fully packed discussion on substantive items. Readers will remember that COP9 was virtual and that although discussions were tortuous (refresh your memory with our COP live reporting), there was no discussion on ‘substantive items’. This in person COP10 in Panama promises to be a proper bun fight – and we just wonder whether the allotted week will be sufficient.”

29 June
Big trouble in little Panama
“The World Health Organization is often criticised for incompetence in a number of its policy focuses, not solely for its calamitous, head-in-the-sand position on lower-risk alternatives to smoking. But in the practice of handing awards to its buddies, it can only be described as a triumphant global expert”

6 June
Yet another murky WHO meeting
“No-one outside of the WHO FCTC bubble will be allowed to view this latest secret meeting, nor do we expect to see published minutes.”

1 June
Consumer groups challenging the WHO FCTC – Who will be next?
“WHO appointees to the FCTC Bureau and Secretariat have always thrived under the cloak of secrecy they cleverly weaved around preparations for COP conferences. They have been mostly unchallenged when ignoring evidence on the effectiveness of safer nicotine and peddling their anti-harm reduction agenda to member delegations. But it appears consumer groups all around the world are alive to their antics this year.”

9 May
April – victory month for harm reduction
For the first time in UN history the notion of harm reduction appeared in the politically negotiated UN resolution on drug policy. Until then harm reduction had only been mentioned in the context of HIV/AIDS. The resolution adopted at the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council mentions a harm reduction approach among other health responses and underlines that support for harm reduction is not qualified as being subject to national legislation.

3 May
Introducing the authors of the COP10 agenda – the FCTC Bureau
“Copwatch decided to investigate by looking at the make-up of the FCTC Bureau, the body which will be writing the agenda. It would be preferable if they published their November and March meeting minutes so we could read the plans first-hand but, as Copwatch reported previously, it seems their typewriter is still at the repairers.”

25 April 
The WHO meetings that never are or were
“Although we know that this GTRF meeting is taking place in India this week, that is all we will ever know. It seems that the WHO has only two rules on the matter. The first rule is that they do not talk about GTRF. The second rule is: they DO NOT talk about GTRF!”

20 April
Who is the new WHO French guy?
“the WHO’s new head of policy on tobacco and nicotine has shown he is incapable of understanding quantitative research, is willing to massage scientific data to hide inconvenient facts, refuses to listen to consumers, and is ideologically opposed to vaping despite its track record of reducing smoking rates in his country.”

11 April
Panamanian party poopers?
“The last Copwatch post reported on Dr. Reina Roa, who has accepted an award from Bloomberg Philanthropies and is now being investigated by Panamanian authorities for “administrative irregularities” over what is a clear conflict of interest in her role as an “independent” adviser to the Ministry of Health.”

3 April
Where’s Bloomby? Check the atlas
“The latest target of Bloomberg’s ongoing programme to influence government policies in low and middle income countries is Panama. Yes, the Panama where COP10 will be held later this year. That Panama.”

23 March
We had a dream….
“Yet again, we will hear whining that there are no safer alternatives to smoking, and that tobacco and nicotine products should be banned. Just not the cigarettes.”

1 March
Where are the FCTC Bureau meeting minutes?
“The second meeting of the FCTC Bureau took place at the end of November 2022, but here we are at the start of March and the minutes of their last meeting have still not been published. Has their typewriter broken?”

1 February
Key milestones for COP10
We provide a graphic of the key milestones leading up to COP10, and opportunities for engagement.

10 February
Is the FCTC’s website now a Bloomboard?
“Yet another day, yet another connection of Bloomberg with the Secretariat of the Framework Convention.”

Even bigger big trouble in little Panama

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Chaos reigns in Panama City in the lead up to COP10.

In August, Copwatch reported on disquiet in Panama about the award of $4,881,732.20 to a consortium tasked with organising the COP10 conference. Heavy criticism was directed at the government for spending such a large sum of money on bureaucrats when the country’s health service was struggling to cope.

“My God, with half of that money” complains Medical Director, Fernando Castaneda to La Prensa Panamá, “we can buy incubators for newborns, thousands of medicines, supplies, and equipment to replace all the damaged ones we have.”

Matters have developed further with the revelation last week, again by Panamanian news outlet, La Prensa, that the agreement has now been terminated.

“The Cabinet Council approved annulling the $5 million contract signed between the Ministry of Health (Minsa) and the Cop 10 Consortium to organize a biannual anti-smoking conference of the World Health Organization (WHO).”

Reports suggest that the consortium encountered extra costs and requested a further $2 million from the government. This was, understandably due to the political pressure the award had created, promptly rejected. At which point the consortium, equally promptly, withdrew from the contract. 

The upshot is that, with less than 2 weeks to go, the WHO has booked a convention centre in which to hold COP10 but has no-one to organise it. Delegates may be arriving in Panama City all dressed up but with nowhere to go. 

In other news, many COP delegates may view a possible rescheduling of COP10 with relief. The Panamanian public has been outraged at the recent award of a rumoured $400 billion contract with a Canadian mining company to exploit three square miles of Panamanian rainforest to extract copper. Protesters have been on the streets throughout the country chanting and waving banners with slogans such as “Panama is not for sale”. In Panama City itself, crowds of 30,000 protesters have clashed with the Police and Army using tear gas and what the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advice page calls “riot control munition”.

There are fuel, gas, and food shortages and protesters have vowed to continue civil disobedience until the mining contract is cancelled, which does not look likely. Searching Twitter hashtags #Panama and #PanamaProtesta brings up disturbing images of angry chaos in Panama City. 

In June, Copwatch referred to previous protests which lasted for weeks on end. 

“Panama was rocked last year by a series of nationwide protests and blockades. They were prompted by cost-of-living concerns, exacerbated by deep-seated mistrust of government officials accused of feasting on taxpayer funds, and complaints about poverty, inequality and corruption in the country.”

BBC World reports that “Such a level of conflict – as massive as it is prolonged – has not been seen since the time of Manuel Antonio Noriega’s dictatorship” which suggests today’s protesters will be in it for the long run.

With around 1,200 delegates due to arrive in Panama imminently, the WHO must be concerned about how they can guarantee attendee safety, especially as protesters have expressed disappointment that the world’s media is not taking much notice of them. Heaven forbid they find out that high ranking government officials from 190 countries are due to convene at the convention centre in Panama City very soon. 

Copwatch can only imagine these two issues combined must be causing headaches amongst FCTC administrators. Perhaps they can reach out to one of their Pharmaceutical partners for a steady supply of Paracetomol. 

The WHO has had a run of extraordinarily bad luck with COP meetings in recent years. Prior to COP6, there was an Ebola outbreak in Africa and the Russians shot down a passenger plane just before Director General Margaret Chan travelled to Moscow to talk about tobacco with Putin. New Delhi saw the worst smog in living memory which closed 20,000 schools in the week the WHO turned up in the city to talk about the dangers of vaping at COP7. The pandemic wrecked plans for COP9 which had to be delayed by a year and held virtually. Now this for COP10.

Copwatch would like to say we have sympathy for such bad luck but, unlike the WHO, we don’t want to mislead you.

The WHO publishes anonymously-written papers designed to gaslight Parties at COP10

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The one where COP delegates are invited to take opinions about vapes on trust

Copwatch has detailed many instances of the WHO and FCTC Secretariat playing fast and loose with evidence or cherry-picking research to suit its anti-harm reduction agenda. It is unscientific and shameful but nothing we have not seen before. But two new reports, on disposable vapes and nicotine pouches, have been published on a separate page to the main COP10 menu which seem specifically designed to mislead COP10 delegates based on nothing more than opinion. 

There is much that could be challenged in them, but the problem would be who to approach considering they are written anonymously. Are senior government officials attending the meeting in Panama from around the world expected to just take the misinformation on trust? 

Let’s discuss the first which concerns single use vapes (which the document charmlessly calls D-ENDS) and contains a number of unreferenced assumptions. 

Without any link to research, it claims that “there is a risk that [the] metal coil will release heavy metals in the heating process.” There may well be a risk, but there also may not. Students are discouraged from referring to Wikipedia for their studies, but at least entries there are rejected if an assumption is not backed up by a credible source. This WHO document does not concern itself with such probity despite being designed for the much more important role of educating government representatives about a vital area of public health. 

It asserts that “the addition of flavourings increases the toxicity of ENDS aerosol in a significant manner”, again without any evidence by way of back up. A Wikipedia reviewer would add [citation needed] but the WHO doesn’t seem to think it necessary. 

The document complains that “we also observe a strong industry lobbying activity to regulate newer products (heated tobacco products, or HTPs, snus and nicotine pouches, and ENDS in all its forms) as little as possible”, which those who recognise the significant benefits of harm reduction would find sensible. Parties are told to ignore this though because – and this may make your jaw drop – the WHO accuses industry of “insisting on rhetoric pretending that they are a “safer” alternative to tobacco products.”

Pretending? There is absolutely no doubt that those products are less harmful than combustible tobacco, with acres of scientific research to support the difference in risk. There is no pretence about it. The only fantasists here are the authors if they believe lower risk nicotine delivery is not safer. If so, how can they be qualified to write papers for the WHO? 

It is also worth noting that consumers and independent scientists are also in favour of light touch regulation, not just industry. Put this down as another flimsy attempt to cast harm reduction as an industry plot rather than a significant public health opportunity. 

It further criticises EU regulations on the strength of nicotine liquids, claiming that 20mg/ml “is already considered a strong concentration” but fails to say by whom. Many would disagree. No reference is given. 

Then the anonymous author or (authors) delve further into cloud cuckoo land. They “stress” that surveys show “D-ENDS prevalence was significantly on the rise and for most other products (HTPs, snus, nicotine pouches) prevalence had increased, and that no significant decrease was observed in cigarette prevalence.” 

Japanese sales of tobacco have declined by around 50% since heated tobacco products hit the market and the UK government recently agreed that vapes “are up to twice as effective as the available licensed nicotine replacement.” One must also wonder how the anonymous authors have missed the fact that Sweden is about to reach the EU smokefree 2040 target of less than 5% smoking prevalence 17 years early thanks to snus use. The WHO document also dreams that “young people could hyperventilate with a D-ENDS”[citation needed], and that “it is usually considered that an Elf bar 800 gives a nicotine equivalent of 60 cigarettes.” This is a regularly-cited snippet of disinformation amongst those opposed to vaping which has been succinctly dismissed as a myth by Action on Smoking and Health in the UK.

After cataloguing red herrings, myths, unsubstantiated opinion and unscientific rumour, our anonymous authors sum up by recommending that “many policies effective against tobacco should be implemented against disposable ENDS as well (plain packages, flavour bans, taxation, full advertisement bans, selling only under a licence system, etc.)”

Copwatch would like to ask a few questions. Who wrote this? What are their qualifications? Why are they offering nothing more than opinions without adequately backing them up with links? Why should Parties believe assertions which are supported by less evidence than would be considered necessary for a half-decent blog? 

The WHO and FCTC Bureau should not be in the business of publishing opinion pieces, which is the only way this document can be described. 

Most importantly, it would be dereliction of duty for Parties to COP10 to take this unevidenced, unprofessional, and superficial guidance seriously when contemplating recommendations in Panama for global regulations.

COP10 documents guide: FCTC/COP/10/4

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The one where everyone marks their own homework

Here we continue the Copwatch guide to the documents provided to ‘educate’ national delegations at the COP10 conference in November, with a look at FCTC/COP/10/4. 

Produced by the Convention Secretariat, the subject for the report is ‘Global progress in implementation of the WHO FCTC’. The report is based on data submitted by the Parties (countries) and measures their progress in implementing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Treaty into their national policy and regulatory frameworks.  

The Secretariat defines progress according to how far countries have implemented the FCTC  MPOWER measures, i.e. Monitoring tobacco use, Protecting people from tobacco smoke, Offering help to quit, Warning about dangers of tobacco use, Enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, and Raising taxes on tobacco.

The report notes that implementation of the FCTC has been generally slow.  However, four countries are singled out for praise for adopting the FCTC MPOWER measures to the highest degree —Brazil, Mauritius, the Netherlands and Turkey .  

But, here’s the thing – the adoption of the MPOWER measures is not helping these countries to meet the crucial objective, i.e to reduce smoking.    

In Turkey, the prevalence of smoking is very high and has actually been increasing in recent years.  In  Brazil smoking is declining very slowly, from 10.8% in 2014 to 9.1% in 2021,  Mauritius also shows a tiny decrease from 19.3% in 2015 to 18.1% in 2021.  The Netherlands, home to a powerful tobacco control lobby, also performs poorly on smoking prevalence rates.   

All four countries, championed by WHO as best practice, perform well on MPOWER measures but perform badly on reducing smoking rates. Is it a coincidence that all four countries have also banned or severely restricted the availability of safer nicotine products?   

In comparison, countries where consumers have been switching to safer nicotine products in large numbers – Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the UK – have seen dramatic drops in smoking prevalence.  These successes are not celebrated by WHO. 

Lars M. Ramström, the eminent tobacco control researcher, politely points these uncomfortable truths out in his recent Commentary:

“The measures for Demand Reduction and Supply Reduction recommended by the WHO are certainly valuable tools. But the fight is not maximally effective without the third pillar stated in Article 1d of the FCTC – Harm Reduction.”
[Commentary] The WHO strategies to reduce tobacco-related deaths are insufficient, Lars M. Ramström 

Do read Professor Ramström’s short commentary in full. And, revisit our article from last year, where we reported that Robert Beaglehole and Ruth Bonita, both independent experts with formerly senior roles in WHO, had said much the same thing:
https://copwatch.info/the-fctc-is-no-longer-fit-for-purpose-say-independent-experts/

Back to the COP10 official documents – these only confirm that the WHO and FCTC have forgotten about the 1 billion people who smoke, a number unchanged over three decades. WHO and the FCTC secretariat will not be part of the solution while they stubbornly continue with their ineffective MPOWER measures and obstruct tobacco harm reduction.

Alternative reading list for #COP10 delegates 

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The official FCTC COP10 documents are listed on the Tenth Session of the Conference of the Parties website.  COPWATCHERS will notice that tobacco harm reduction is absent from those official documents, with no consideration given to the opportunities offered by safer nicotine products.   Here we have compiled a list of articles to round off the COP10 delegates’ education.  Tweet to @FCTCcopwatch if you think we have missed anything out.  

15 past presidents of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco
Balancing Consideration of the Risks and Benefits of E-Cigarettes

Action on Smoking and Health
Addressing common myths about vaping: Putting the evidence in context

Clive Bates
Eyes on the Ball

Fake news alert: WHO updates its post-truth fact sheet on e-cigarettes

One hundred specialists call for WHO to change its hostile stance on tobacco harm reduction – new letter to FCTC delegates published

Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Germany)
Health risk assessment of nicotine pouches

Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA)
Shadow Report on the (NON)-Implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Article 1 (d) on Harm Reduction Strategies

Grant Churchill
A Captivating Compound

Cochrane
Latest Cochrane Review finds high certainty evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes are more effective than traditional nicotine-replacement therapy (NRT) in helping people quit smoking

Electronic Cigarettes for Smoking Cessation: Cochrane Living Systematic Review

Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction
The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the Conference of the Parties (COP): an explainer

The FCTC COP10 Agenda and supporting documents: implications for the future of tobacco harm reduction (available in 13 languages)

Office for Health Improvements and Disparities (formerly Public Health England)
Nicotine vaping in England: 2022 evidence update main findings

Nicotine vaping in England: 2022 evidence update summary

Queen Mary University of London
Population study finds no sign that e-cigarettes are a gateway into smoking

Lars Ramström
[Commentary] The WHO strategies to reduce tobacco-related deaths are insufficient

Harry Shapiro
Harry’s Blog 119: Who cares about tobacco control?

#COP10 documents guide: FCTC/COP/10/9

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The one where the WHO tries to redefine smoke and hides inconvenient evidence

To continue the Copwatch guide to documents being provided to ‘educate’ national delegations at the COP10 conference in November, here is a look at FCTC/COP/10/9, published in July. 

This document deals with heated tobacco products but, as we shall see, it is not very impressive. It claims to “examine the challenges that novel and emerging tobacco products are posing for the comprehensive application of the WHO FCTC … as requested in paragraph 3 of decision FCTC/COP8/(22).”

But a quick look at the COP8 decision they refer to shows this does nothing of the sort. In 2018, the WHO asked the FCTC Secretariat:

“to prepare a comprehensive report, with scientists and experts, independent from the tobacco industry, and competent national authorities, to be submitted to the Ninth session of the COP on research and evidence on novel and emerging tobacco products, in particular heated tobacco products, regarding their health impacts including on non-users, their addictive potential, perception and use, attractiveness, potential role in initiating and quitting smoking, marketing including promotional strategies and impacts, claims of reduced harm, variability of products, regulatory experience and monitoring of Parties, impact on tobacco control efforts and research gaps”

Phew, quite a workload! 

The COP8 decision further requested, after that large body of work had been completed, that a report be drawn up to “subsequently propose potential policy options to achieve the objectives and measures” of the FCTC treaty. 

It has been 5 years since COP8 and that decision, but in that time the FCTC Secretariat and their laboratories (known as TobLabNet) appear to have done next to nothing to expand the evidence base. FCTC/COP/10/9 regularly boasts about how very little they know on the subject. 

“Independent … data on the health and environmental impact of these novel tobacco products is incipient” (that’s a posh word for just beginning). 

“The knowledge of these novel and emerging tobacco products has been rapidly increasing, but information on their long-term health effects is limited”

“[T]here are limited data available on uptake of HTPs by adolescents, as well as former smokers and non-smokers.” 

It begs the question what, if anything, has the WHO been doing in the last five years since COP8? Countries who have ratified the FCTC treaty do not pay large amounts of taxpayer money for the WHO’s institutions to just sit on their hands for half a decade. Perhaps delegations at COP10 should be asking some searching questions of the Secretariat on the matter. 

Having airily skipped over the yawning chasm of missing research that they were supposed to have gathered on heated tobacco in just four pages, the FCTC/COP/10/9 document then spends the rest of the 18 pages discussing what bans and restrictions should be put in place. Predictably, they demand that heated tobacco should be treated exactly the same as combustible cigarettes, despite HTPs having been found by the UK Committee on Toxicity and the Food and Drug Administration in the United States to be far less harmful than smoking. 

Copwatch also noted the authors of FCTC/COP/10/9 putting on their philosopher’s hat and promoting strange theories of what constitutes smoke. “Can the aerosols of novel and emerging tobacco products qualify as “tobacco smoke?”, they theorize, before answering their own question with a far-fetched explanation. “Yes … strictly speaking, visible aerosols deriving in whole or in part from thermally driven chemical reactions qualify as “smoke”, even when combustion is not involved in the process.”

They are very certain about this, further explaining that “these aerosols are clearly within the scientific definition of “smoke”, and any smoke emitted by HTPs is unambiguously “tobacco smoke.”

The definition of unambiguous is “not open to more than one interpretation” according to Oxford Languages, which will be a surprise to German and Swedish courts who have both found otherwise. 

In September 2021, a decision in a German court struck down the German government’s classification of heated tobacco as “tobacco products for smoking”. A hearing on the merits of a Philip Morris product resulted in the court ordering the Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety to annul their prior decision and to classify them as “smokeless tobacco products” instead.

A similar case in Sweden in September 2022 came to the same conclusion. The Swedish Public Health Authority (PHA) had decided to classify heated tobacco as “tobacco products for smoking” but was ordered to change this by the court, which held that the PHA’s decision was not in line with any scientific definition of combustion. The court concluded that heated tobacco is not consumed through combustion and “is therefore rightly a smokeless tobacco product.”

Neither the German or Swedish governments appealed the decisions and the definitions are now final and binding in both countries.

Copwatch believes that the WHO is well aware of these court decisions, but just chooses to ignore them. At the foot of the FCTC/COP/10/9 document is an annex which details “several approaches to classify or regulate” heated tobacco in a number of different countries. Note that it says “several” and not all. This is because Germany and Sweden are not amongst them. 

Countries which have ratified the FCTC are allowed to regulate heated tobacco as they wish, smokeless or not, but there are not many cases testing whether the aerosol is smoking or not. In Germany and Sweden there were such cases and the courts decided it is not smoke. 

It would be incredibly inconvenient if the WHO had to admit in its annex that their “unambiguous” definition of smoke is not unambiguous, after all. So they just hide the information from delegates instead. 

To sum up FCTC/COP/10/9, the WHO repeatedly says it does not know much about heated tobacco, but at the same time it is apparent that no work is being done to find out. It recommends treating less harmful products the same as combustible tobacco based on a definition of smoke which is not borne out when tested in court, and it gives the delegations which will be attending COP10 all the information they need to make decisions, except information which the WHO finds inconvenient. 

And we pay for this?

Big trouble in little Panama

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The World Health Organization is often criticised for incompetence in a number of its policy focuses, not solely for its calamitous, head-in-the-sand position on lower-risk alternatives to smoking. But in the practice of handing awards to its buddies, it can only be described as a triumphant global expert.

To celebrate World No Tobacco Day in May, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros liberally dished out a number of motivational gongs to high-ranking members of its secretive club, and spoke in particularly glowing terms about a Special Recognition Award to Reina Roa Rodríguez, who is almost royalty in the WHO cabal. 

Dr Roa is Panama’s Focal Point for Tobacco Control, and Vice President of the WHO’s Bureau of the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (MOP), but you may remember her more for featuring in two previous Copwatch updates. 

In April, Copwatch reported that Dr Roa was being investigated by Panamanian authorities for “administrative irregularities” over a conflict of interest in her role as an “independent” adviser to the Ministry of Health. Questions arose over the Panamanian Coalition Against Tabaquismo (COPACET), of which she is founder, accepting a Bloomberg Philanthropies Award for Global Tobacco Control as a reward for successfully designing public policies which aligned perfectly with the goals of, you guessed it, Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The investigation did not get very far as she promptly resigned. 

Now Dr Roa is embroiled in more controversy. In her capacity as National Coordinator of Tobacco Control of the Ministry of Health, she is responsible for arranging transport for patients in critical or serious condition to hospitals located in remote areas, for which reimbursement payments are made. 

It is alleged that there have been many discrepancies in her book-keeping for these services. Billed hours did not match those recorded on transfer request forms, invoices were found without proof of patient admission in medical records, and incomplete request forms have been discovered, with no information which correlates with the transport required.

According to a letter processed by the Court of Accounts, Dr Roa is facing an order to freeze her assets, pending repayment of $87,930. 

Panama was rocked last year by a series of nationwide protests and blockades. They were prompted by cost-of-living concerns, exacerbated by deep-seated mistrust of government officials accused of feasting on taxpayer funds, and complaints about poverty, inequality and corruption in the country. 

Dr Roa has been a Ministry of Health employee since 1986, with latest filings showing she is paid $4,294 per month, roughly five times the average Panamanian salary. In the current political climate, with the Panamanian public angry at how their leaders are behaving, it is surely unimaginable that such a stalwart of upstanding public health, a WHO high priestess and recent awardee, no less, would stoop to feathering the nest further by doctoring (no pun intended) documents for health services. 

We are sure this is merely a simple misunderstanding which will be cleared up before criminal charges are filed against Dr Roa. 

Or perhaps she could just resign again.  

Yet another murky WHO meeting

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Copwatch has often referred to the opaque nature of the WHO’s Conference of the Parties meetings. It is fully expected that the COP10 meeting in Panama will follow the same path of operating behind closed doors, as best described in this briefing from 2021.

“Also excluded are advocacy NGOs representing people directly affected by tobacco control regimes. This includes smokers and users of safer nicotine products. The involvement of the tobacco industry in the production of some but by no means all safer nicotine products means that advocacy organisations in favour of tobacco harm reduction, including numerous vaping or snus consumer advocacy organisations, are excluded de facto.”

The shadowy and forever hidden activities of the Global Tobacco Regulators Forum (GTRF) have also been documented on these pages. Most recently in April. 

“A small group of researchers, who are not keen on tobacco harm reduction, cherry-picking studies which agree with their preconceived beliefs, and citing unpublished papers from a small selection of WHO members resulting from secret meetings which are not minuted, all funded by a country which is not a Party to the Convention.”

Minutes from the last two FCTC Bureau meetings in November and March have still not surfaced either, as Copwatch has reported before. 

Now we must add yet another murky WHO meeting to the ever-growing list. 

The UN event management system carries a short notice about an event called the Global Consultation on Novel and Emerging Nicotine and Tobacco Products which is to take place in Geneva between 21 and 23 June. There is no further publicly available information about this meeting. We can assume though that this event is highly likely to be a preparation for COP10 and the work the WHO and the FCTC Secretariat are doing to recommend the full equalisation of all novel products with cigarettes in reports to be presented to the Parties. 

Framed as a consultation, Copwatch expects the result will be dedicated publications, such as these on heated tobacco and vaping products which were issued after a global consultations led by the EURO WHO region before the last COP. 

No-one outside of the WHO FCTC bubble will be allowed to view this latest secret meeting, nor do we expect to see published minutes. 

The WHO website contains a page on transparency, which confidently declares: 

“To build trust, communicators must be transparent about how WHO analyses data and how it makes recommendations and policies.

“Communicators must rapidly and publicly report the participants, processes and conclusions of guideline development meetings.”

Presumably, this is their idea of a joke.

Introducing the authors of the COP10 agenda – the FCTC Bureau

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The New Nicotine Alliance in the UK has done a good job of highlighting the threats to harm reduction which could materialise at COP10 in this document. Their call to action lists them as being:

  • A ban on all open system vaping products
  • A ban of all flavours except tobacco
  • A ban on nicotine salts in vaping products
  • Regulating products so that they are all exactly the same and restrict delivery of nicotine
  • Demanding that countries around the world treat vaping and heated tobacco products the same as combustible tobacco
  • Taxation at the same rate as cigarettes, banning use where smoking is prohibited, large graphic health warnings, plain packaging, and a ban on all advertising, promotion and sponsorship

The nature of these may seem far-fetched to the casual reader, so how realistic is it that what seems to be a full-on assault on vaping will make it onto the COP10 agenda? 

Copwatch decided to investigate by looking at the make-up of the FCTC Bureau, the body which will be writing the agenda. It would be preferable if they published their November and March meeting minutes so we could read the plans first-hand but, as Copwatch reported previously, it seems their typewriter is still at the repairers. 

The Bureau comprises six representatives, one from each of the WHO’s regions, and its role is to make policy proposals which are then circulated to regional coordinators. Surely they will reject the outlandish attacks on vaping and other products contained in WHO reports circulated to the Parties, won’t they? 

The five Vice-Presidents come from Uruguay, Netherlands, Australia, Sri Lanka and Oman. Each of their country policies on vaping are listed below:
Uruguay, vaping products are banned.
Sri Lanka, vaping products are banned.
Oman, vaping products are banned.
Australia, vaping products are banned without a prescription (which are hard to come by).


Netherlands, vaping products are allowed but, from July, e-liquid will be restricted to contain just 16 ingredients which make it impossible to form any flavour at all, including tobacco. The Presidency of the Bureau is held by Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) which has no specific law regarding vaping products, though we are sure it will have soon judging by the company its Bureau representative keeps.

We suppose there is a chance that these fine, upstanding, Bureau-crats will take heed of the increasing evidence that vaping is a huge potential prize for public health around the globe and set a sensible agenda for COP10. Probably about the same chance that we at Copwatch have of flying to the moon.

Who is the new WHO French guy?

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The World Health Organization’s Director General has appointed a new leadership team following his re-election last year. Naturally, we are interested in who has been handed the brief of overseeing the WHO’s future efforts towards smoking and nicotine. 

According to Health Policy Watch, the appointee is Dr Jérôme Salomon from France, who will act as Assistant Director-General for Universal Health Coverage, Communicable and Non-communicable Diseases. Copwatch believes it prudent that his credentials be checked for suitability in such an important role so we have investigated his track record.

Firstly, it appears that he finds mathematics challenging. In 2019, in his position as director of the General Directorate for Health (DGS) he appeared on French TV confidently stating that half of all French high school students were vaping and that one in six were doing so every day. Embarrassingly for Jérôme, this merely highlighted his confusion. 

As explained by Vapolitique, Jérôme’s statement misunderstood not one, but two, different surveys. 50.3% of students in just one city, Saint-Etienne not France, had said they experimented with vaping, but Jérôme failed to mention that the study also recorded only 3.6% were doing so daily. The Saint-Etienne survey was also not consistent with national data which showed lower vaping use nationally. 

His claim that one in six were vaping daily is arguably more embarrassing. Although the French Observatory of Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) study applied across France, the percentage of adolescents Jérôme cited were only recorded as vaping once or more, not daily. We are certain that this was a compound error brought about by a misunderstanding of data and he was not lying to the public, of course.  

Jérôme later generated controversy with his role in France’s COVID-19 efforts. In 2018, he had ordered destruction of face masks to save money which meant, when the virus struck, the country suffered a shortage of supplies. The administrative court of Paris found that, instead of admitting the mistake, Jérôme ordered a scientific report be changed to justify his decision. This led one Senator to remark that “faced with the shortage of masks, instead of speaking the truth, the government masked the shortage.”

Having survived that scandal, Jérôme set about to further his work extinguishing vaping products as a means of quitting smoking. Between 2016 and 2019, smoking rates plummeted in France due to the advent of vaping. The government reacted to this by including vaping in their annual stop smoking event, Mois Sans Tabac (Month Without Tobacco). Consumer organisations were recruited to give expert advice on how vaping can help smokers quit, understandable considering vaping had become the most popular cessation method. 

Jérôme took office as head of DGS in 2018 and proceeded to reverse this progress. He set up a committee to discuss tobacco control in France and personally opposed the participation of consumer groups in the process without giving any justification. In 2022, Mois Sans Tabac went ahead without any mention of vaping products, effectively eradicated over time by Jérôme. As consumer group La Vape Du Coeur remarked, “How is it that the most popular (and most effective) means of risk reduction was so hidden during this emblematic month of the fight against tobacco?” having been embraced from 2016 previously. 

To sum up, the WHO’s new head of policy on tobacco and nicotine has shown he is incapable of understanding quantitative research, is willing to massage scientific data to hide inconvenient facts, refuses to listen to consumers, and is ideologically opposed to vaping despite its track record of reducing smoking rates in his country. 

Jérôme is a perfect fit for the WHO. But for the good of global public health, not so much.