Category: World Health Organization

WHO Says Nicotine Industry Still Targeting Children

Photo: v-a-butenkov
Despite its talk about harm reduction, the tobacco industry is still targeting youth via social media, sports and music festivals and flavored products, according to the World Health Organization, reports Reuters.
In a joint report issued with STOP, an industry watchdog, the global health body alleged that tobacco companies’ alternative smoking products such as vapes are often marketed with designs and flavors that are appealing to young people.
“It’s dishonest to talk about harm reduction when they are marketing to children,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general.
The WHO pointed to flavors like bubblegum as a driver of youth vape use increases. The industry, however, argues that flavors are a key tool in helping adult smokers switch to less harmful alternatives. Most large companies have moved away from youth-appealing flavors.
The WHO says that companies use social media and sponsorship of music festivals and sports festivals to target youth, allowing the companies to promote their brands to younger audiences and to hand out free samples.
In addition, the WHO argues that there is insufficient evidence that vapes help smokers quit. Rather, the entity said that there is evidence vaping increases traditional cigarette use, especially among youth.
Sarah Jackson, principal research fellow at University College London’s Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, contradicted that view, however, saying that the WHO statements, “do not accurately reflect current evidence on e-cigarettes.”
May 24, 2024
COP Ends With Pledges to Health, Environment

Photo: Maksym Yemelyanov
The 10th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) concluded on Feb. 10 with a commitment to strengthen protections against the impact of tobacco on the environment and health.
“We have taken a historic decision on Article 18,” said Adriana Blanco Marquizo, head of the FCTC Secretariat, in a statement, describing action to strengthen the article of the FCTC focused on the protection of the environment and the health of all people.
“The decision urges parties to take account of the environmental impacts from the cultivation, manufacture, consumption and waste disposal of tobacco products and to strengthen the implementation of this article, including through national policies related to tobacco and protection of the environment,” Blanco Marquizo said.
Representatives from 142 parties gathered in Panama City Feb. 5–10 to tackle a range of issues from progress on implementation of the treaty to the regulation of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.
According to the WHO, some 200,000 hectares of land are cleared every year for tobacco cultivation, accounting for up to 20 percent of the annual increase in greenhouse gases.
The decision also addresses the issue of cigarette filters. According to the WHO, an estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are thrown away annually worldwide, representing 1.69 billion pounds of toxic trash containing plastics.
“Under specific circumstances—such as sunlight and moisture—cigarette filters break down into smaller plastic pieces, eventually leaching out some of the 7,000 chemicals contained in a single cigarette,” the WHO wrote on its website. “Many of those chemicals are environmentally toxic. The decision on Article 18 is very timely given the ongoing intergovernmental negotiation committees working to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.”
COP10 delegates also agreed to strengthen guidelines on cross-border tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and the depiction of tobacco in entertainment media.
In addition, two expert groups were established—one to work on forward-looking tobacco control measures under Article 2.1 of the FCTC and the other to focus on Article 19, which concerns liability.
Other decisions adopted by COP10 relate to the promotion of human rights through the WHO FCTC as well as strengthening the FCTC Investment Fund.
The parties also agreed to extend by five years the mandate of the Global Strategy to Accelerate Tobacco Control 2019–2025: Advancing Sustainable Development Through the Implementation of the WHO FCTC 2019–2025 so that it fully aligns with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
COP10 also adopted the Panama Declaration, which draws attention to the “fundamental and irreconcilable conflict” between the interests of the tobacco industry and the interests of public health. The declaration also makes clear the need for policy coherence within governments to comply with the requirements of Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC, which aims to protect public health policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.
Contradicting the observation of tobacco grower and consumer groups that traveled to Panama, the WHO insisted that COP10 was open to the media, which it said had the opportunity to observe all public and open sessions.
COP10 is followed by the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, which will meet in Panama City Feb. 12–15.
February 12, 2024
COP10 Opens With Warning Against New Products
Image: SL-Photography
Delegates from around the world gathered in Panama City on Feb 5. to open the 10^th Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, (FCTC).
Adriana Blanco Marquizo, head of the of the FCTC Secretariat welcomed attendees and warned of the increasing availability of novel and emerging nicotine and tobacco products.
These are, “becoming a very troubling problem with an alarming increase in the use of these products by young people,” Blanco Marquizo said in her opening address.
“Part of this increase is due to disingenuous tobacco industry messages portraying these products as a replacement for real tobacco control measures, as the industry again tries to claim a seat at the table—as part of the solution to an epidemic that the industry created and continues to sustain.”
She also asked everyone to be alert to what she described as “the relentless interference of the tobacco industry in every corner of the world.”
At COP10, delegates will consider a wide range of work to direct the FCTC in its work.
Discussions at COP10 will include:
Implementation of FCTC Articles 9 and 10 (Regulation of contents and disclosure of tobacco products): reports by the Bureau, by the Expert Group and by the WHO
Tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship: depiction of tobacco in entertainment media: report by the Working Group
Novel and emerging tobacco products
Forward-looking tobacco control measures (in relation to FCTC Article 2.1)
Implementation of FCTC Article 19, which relates to liability
Improving the reporting system of the FCTC
Implementation Review Mechanism
Contribution of the FCTC to the promotion and fulfilment of human rights
The FCTC Investment Fund
COP10 runs from today until Saturday Feb. 10.
It is followed by the third Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, Feb. 12-15, 2024.
February 6, 2024
WHO Seeks to Equate Risks of Vaping and Smoking

Image: Andrey Popov
The World Health Organization has urged governments to ban all flavors in e-cigarettes, treating them like combustible products.
While some consider e-cigarettes a key to reducing death and disease caused by smoking, the WHO said “urgent measures” are needed to control them, according to Reuters.
“Kids are being recruited and trapped at an early age to use e-cigarettes and may get hooked to nicotine,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general.

Regulating vapes like cigarettes would only serve to reinforce misunderstandings about the relative risks of vaping and send the wrong message to smokers.
Marina Murphy, senior director of scientific and medical affairs, ANDS
He urged countries to implement strict measures, such as bans on all flavors and introducing tobacco control measures to vapor products. These would include high taxes and vape bans in public places.
While the WHO does not have authority over national regulations, its recommendations are often voluntarily adopted.
“Regulating vapes like cigarettes would only serve to reinforce misunderstandings about the relative risks of vaping and send the wrong message to smokers,” said Marina Murphy, senior director of scientific and medical affairs at ANDS, adding that the WHO’s position was “detached from reality.”
December 14, 2023
Advocates Clarify Science Controversies Ahead of COP10

Photo: Alliance
Tobacco harm reduction advocates are keen to clarify controversies surround the science on nicotine and vaping ahead of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which will take place in November 2023.
The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Advocates (CAPHRA) has written FCTC delegation heads to help inform their respective countries’ positions.
In its letter, CAPHRA notes that two high-profile studies, which have been quoted by tobacco controllers regarding the dangers of nicotine and vaping, have since been retracted and removed from significant medical journals.
“The first retraction is an article published in February 2022 in The World Journal of Oncology, claiming that nicotine vapers face about the same cancer risk as cigarette smokers,” CAPHRA wrote.
Another article, in the Journal of the American Heart Association, which reported an association between vaping and heart attacks was also retracted. Astoundingly, advocates noted, this article is still used as a reference in the FCTC guidelines around e-cigarettes.

Consumers’ rights to choose to use less harmful products to switch from smoking remain under tremendous threat from FCTC’s continuing failure to address scientific evidence, democratic processes and human rights.
Nancy Loucas, executive coordinator, CAPHRA
In addition, the THR regional advocacy group sent delegates a bibliography of key and current studies that disprove some of the more outrageous claims around harm.
On the supposed “youth vaping epidemic,” CAPHRA noted “a new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food & Drug Administration suggests that youth vaping rates appear to be dropping, compared to pre-pandemic levels… In fact, youth vaping in the U.S. has plummeted by 60 percent over the past two years.’
“Consumers’ rights to choose to use less harmful products to switch from smoking remain under tremendous threat from FCTC’s continuing failure to address scientific evidence, democratic processes and human rights,” says CAPHRA executive coordinator Nancy Loucas.
The CAPHRA representatives reminded the health leaders that the FCTC has a mandate to pursue Harm Reduction as a core tobacco control policy—a position it has failed to acknowledge or implement since its inception, according to CAPHRA.
“WHO and its FCTC continue to press for signatory states to adopt ever more restrictive policies, including outright bans, based on dubious science. Delegates to COP10 should be representing the rights and aspirations of the citizens,” wrote the CAPHRA member organizations.
“Consumers have the right to make choices that help them avoid adverse health outcomes and smokers have the right to access less harmful nicotine products as alternatives to smoking. Please take account of these rights when making and presenting your submissions to COP10,” the letter concluded.
January 20, 2023
Critics: WHO Tobacco Trends Report ‘Celebrating Failure’
Photo: Syda Productions
The World Health Organization’s fourth WHO global tobacco trends report, which was released today, shows that there are 1.3 billion tobacco users globally compared to 1.32 billion in 2015. This number is expected to drop to 1.27 billion by 2025.
Sixty countries are now on track to achieving the voluntary global target of a 30 percent reduction in tobacco use between 2010 and 2025: two years ago only 32 countries were on track.
According to the WHO, millions of lives have been saved by effective and comprehensive tobacco control policies under the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and by measures taken under the global health body’s MPOWER initiatives (Monitoring tobacco use, Protecting people from tobacco smoke, Quitting tobacco, Warning about the dangers of tobacco, Enforcing tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship bans and Raising taxes on tobacco).
“It is very encouraging to see fewer people using tobacco each year, and more countries on track to meet global targets,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement. “We still have a long way to go, and tobacco companies will continue to use every trick in the book to defend the gigantic profits they make from peddling their deadly wares. We encourage all countries to make better use of the many effective tools available for helping people to quit, and saving lives.”

To see numbers reduce from 1.32 billion to 1.30 billion tobacco users over five years cannot be argued as evidence of a successful strategy.
Gerry Stimson, emeritus professor Imperial College London and project director for the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction
Critics, by contrast, said the WHO report showed tobacco control failing. “As the WHO publishes its latest global tobacco trends report, it trumpets falling tobacco use. But the global health institution is celebrating failure,” said Gerry Stimson, emeritus professor Imperial College London and project director for the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction.
“To see numbers reduce from 1.32 billion to 1.30 billion tobacco users over five years cannot be argued as evidence of a successful strategy. Eight million lives are lost every year due to smoking-related disease. What we are seeing is evidence of a dereliction of public health duty.”
Stimson lambasted the WHO for failing to consider reduced-risk products in its strategy.
“With modern safer nicotine products, these technological disruptors such as vaping devices, nicotine pouches, heated tobacco products, we have the means at our disposal to end smoking and to end it soon,” he said.
“Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction estimates put the number of users of harm reduction products at 100 million worldwide. Many smokers are put off from switching though, as a direct consequence of the distortion of public health messaging from the WHO and other tobacco control organizations funded by U.S. philanthropic interests that seem to care little for the health of current smokers.
“Harm reduction is the third pillar of the tobacco control strategy named in the FCTC, along with supply and demand reduction. We urge the WHO to integrate harm reduction into its approach to tobacco control, as it already does for drug use and HIV/AIDS prevention, and to address current deficits in the WHO’s MPOWER strategy by enabling it to become EMPOWERED—adding ‘Engage with affected communities,’ ‘Encourage smokers to switch to safer nicotine products’ and ‘Deliver accurate information about safer alternatives.’”
Key findings of the WHO report include:
In 2020, 22.3 percent of the global population used tobacco, 36.7 percent of all men and 7.8 percent of the world’s women. Currently, 60 countries are on track to achieve the tobacco use reduction target by 2025.
The steepest decline in prevalence rates over time is seen in the Americas. The average rate of tobacco use there has gone from 21 percent in 2010 down to 16 percent in 2020.
The WHO’s African Region has the lowest average rate of tobacco use at 10 percent in 2020, down from 15 percent in 2010.
In Europe 18 percent of women still use tobacco, substantially more than in any other region. Women in Europe are the slowest in the world to cut tobacco use. All other WHO regions are on track to reduce tobacco use rates among women by at least 30 percent by 2025.
Pakistan is the only country in the WHO’s Eastern-Mediterranean region that’s on track to reach the tobacco reduction target. Four of the six countries in the world where tobacco use is increasing are in this region.
Southeast Asian currently has the highest rates of tobacco use, with around 432 million users, or 29 percent of its population. But this is also the region where tobacco use is declining fastest. The region is likely to reach tobacco use rates similar to the European Region and the Western Pacific Region by 2025.
The WHO Western Pacific Region is projected to have the highest tobacco use rate among men, (more than 45 percent) using tobacco in 2025.
November 16, 2021
Bates: COP9 is ‘Closed Bubbles of Cultivated Groupthink’

Credit: Artur
In a new blog post, tobacco control advocate Clive Bates says that the World Health Organization’s tobacco control treaty meetings are “closed bubbles of cultivated groupthink.” Bates compares the United Nation’s climate change treaty with its tobacco control treaty , claiming the two groups use science and logic in completely different ways.
“At the start of COP9, the head of the [Framework Convention on Tobacco Control] FCTC convention secretariat proudly drew a comparison with the other COP, the one going on in Glasgow dealing with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC),” Bates writes. “Perhaps she hoping some of the interest in UNFCCC COP-26 would rub off on the altogether more tawdry FCTC COP-9. But the tobacco COP takes an aggressive exclusionary and insular approach to stakeholders that would never be tolerated in the climate COP.”
Clive Bates
There is a sharp contrast between the climate COP meetings and tobacco COP meetings, according to Bates. The FCTC tobacco COP has “highly restrictive and opaque practices” that ensure that it operates as an “echo chamber populated by compliant observers.” He says that the COP9 chooses so-called “civil society” organizations according to their willingness to support the FCTC and contribute to its implementation.
“It excludes many legitimate perspectives: notably consumers, pro-harm reduction public health experts, policy think tanks and critical economists, libertarians, and commercial entities affected by decisions made by COP,” he says. “For this COP, the FCTC process will be used to exclude several organizations and bolster the groupthink bubble … This insularity is not a feature of the UNFCCC climate COP meetings. A comparison with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is revealing.”
In the FCTC, any non-governmental organization (NGO) can be refused observer status at the request of a single party. NGOs are required to be international and committed to tobacco control, ruling out most consumer organizations who see themselves as victims of tobacco control. NGO observers are required to file reports on their activity with the Secretariat for approval.
“The Secretariat then makes recommendations about who should be granted observer status, retained as observers, or expelled,” he says. “The ‘civil society’ organizations chosen are mainly grant-funded tobacco control organizations, often with bizarre views about public health that bear little relationship to the norms in the countries they come from or anything like good practice in policy and science.”
November 8, 2021
WHO Conference on Tobacco Control Starts Today

Image: Tobacco Reporter archive
The Conference of the Parties to the WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC) today opens its ninth session (COP9). One significant point to be discussed by the Parties is a potential new funding strategy, seen as a means of strengthening and expanding the support that can be offered to Parties of the global health treaty.
Parties at COP9 are expected to consider how to address a common problem described by many countries—the lack of sufficient financial resources to strengthen tobacco control measures. This will mean a plan to establish a capital investment fund is high on the COP9 agenda. The Parties will decide on the adoption of a mechanism for new income streams to help fight the tobacco epidemic.
The proposal offers the opportunity to raise a targeted $50 million for the FCTC. A similar fund will be proposed for adoption at the second session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products to take place later this month—but in the case of the Protocol, the fund proposed will be for $25 million to strengthen implementation of that treaty.
In a press release, the WHO said it would continue pushing forward with comprehensive implementation of the FCTC as the real solution to the tobacco epidemic, despite what it described as tobacco industry efforts to “stir up confusion and falsely parade itself as a solution to harmful tobacco consumption.”
The COP9 discussions Nov. 8-13 bring together Parties, representing countries, United Nations agencies, other intergovernmental organizations and civil society. The participants will be exchanging their experiences in implementing tobacco control measures and reducing the prevalence of tobacco use. They will also be looking at strategies that improve tobacco control efforts, amid what the WHO describes as “attempts by the tobacco industry to interfere in ending the tobacco epidemic that is killing over 8 million people annually.”
During the conference, delegates will also be evaluating the most recent Global Progress Report, which was launched last week. A total of 148 Parties reported on the comprehensive tobacco control measures contained in the treaty. For example, in relation to progress on Article 11, two-thirds of Parties confirmed that the required health warnings are being displayed on tobacco product packaging and, 17 countries confirmed that they have adopted the requirements for plain packaging of tobacco products.
Parties have reported that they have struggled to introduce comprehensive advertising, promotion and sponsorship bans. Many complained of persisting interference in policymaking by the tobacco industry.
In her keynote speech at the opening of COP9, Adriana Blanco Marquizo, head of the Convention Secretariat referred to the ongoing COP 26, on Climate Change. There are important parallels between the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the WHO FCTC, she noted.
“Both treaties aim to protect present and future generations,” said Blanco Marquizo. “It’s clear that tobacco damages the environment throughout its life cycle, from crop to post-consumer waste, contributing to deforestation, desertification, greenhouse emissions and plastic contamination. But probably the most important point shared at both COPs, is that the tobacco epidemic and climate change are both manmade and preventable.”
Critics, by contrast, focused on the differences between the two COPs, with the Climate Change gathering welcoming public scrutiny and industry input, and COP9 convening behind close doors and banning dialogue with the industry.
Immediately after COP9, the second Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products will be convened, Nov. 15-18. The Protocol is a separate treaty expanding Article 15 of FCTC.
November 8, 2021
U.K. Urged to Use Brexit Rights to Tout Vaping at WHO

Photo: sea and sun
David Jones, a former Welsh Secretary and Brexit minister, has urged Britain to use its Brexit freedoms to tout the health benefits of e-cigarettes during the next summit on tobacco organized by the World Health Organisation, reports The Express.
The parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control are set to meet virtually in November to discuss tobacco control policies.
Delegates will debate the success and failure of recent and ongoing tobacco control initiatives. They will discuss how best the world can be convinced to give up traditional cigarettes, and they will debate matters such as law enforcement’s involvement in the illicit tobacco trade.
Both the WHO and the EU have taken a dim view of e-cigarettes, pushing for ever-tighter restrictions. The WHO has claimed on its website that there is growing evidence of risk from e-cigarettes.
Britain has taken a pragmatic approach to the category, allowing vapor products to remain on the market within a comparatively light regulatory framework.
“Unlike previous COPs, the U.K. does not have to join the EU’s position,” said Jones. “We are not bound by Brussels, we are independent and free to back the science, back Public Health England, and back our own health experts, over the WHO.
“We must not fall into bad habits and simply join the EU position because it would be the easy thing to do. Brexit meant control over our own policies. This is our chance to show the electorate what that means in reality. We must use our freedom to save lives.”
There are concerns however that the WHO will not recognize the U.K. as an independent voice at its summit. Instead, it may defer to the EU as the voice for the Europe region.
October 12, 2021
WHO Moves FCTC Conference of the Parties to Online Forum

Photo: Olrat
The Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP9) to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the Second Session of the Meeting of the Parties (MOP2) to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products will take place virtually, with COP9 running Nov. 8-13, 2021, and MOP2 running Nov. 15-18, 2021.
The meetings were originally scheduled to take place in The Hague. In view of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and related travel restrictions, the WHO has decided to move the events online.
The virtual format means participants will consider abridged agendas, the WHO wrote on its website. Several issues, including ones relating to tobacco harm reduction, will be deferred for discussion until the next regular meeting of the governing body, COP10, in 2023.
September 1, 2021