Tag: COP9

Filipino Delegate Praised For Courage, Bravery at COP9

Teodoro Locsin Jr.
(Photo: Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs)
Tobacco harm reduction (THR) advocates and vapers have praised Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. for his insistence at the ninth Conference of the Parties (COP9) that the latest scientific information must be considered to solve the global smoking problem.
“We salute his bravery at COP9 for promoting the Philippines’ balanced and evidence-based approach to safer nicotine products,” said Peter Dator, president of consumer group Vapers PH and Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) member. “Opponents and officials have since done their best to discredit Secretary Locsin and disrespect our country’s democracy and sovereignty, but they have failed badly.”
“In a world where smoking causes eight million deaths every year, Secretary Locsin has done everyone a huge favor,” said Nancy Loucas, executive coordinator of CAPHRA. “Telling COP9 about the success of ‘far less harmful novel tobacco products’ and the Philippine government’s political support for them was music to the ears of the millions who’ve successful quit deadly cigarettes via vaping.”

We salute his bravery at COP9 for promoting the Philippines’ balanced and evidence-based approach to safer nicotine products.
Peter Dator, president, Vapers PH
Loucas organized a global livestream called sCOPe during COP9, featuring leading THR experts and consumer advocates. The livestream added to the increasing pressure on the WHO to embrace safer nicotine products.
“How can we trust the WHO and the FCTC when they are afraid of science? In this age of fake news and alternative facts, it is important for governments to take a stand for the facts and know how to sift through the propaganda. This is what Secretary Locsin did at COP9, and I join the Philippine Cabinet and Congress in commending his actions,” said Dator.
Earlier, Locsin had drawn fire from the Philippines Department of Health for stating that tobacco products were a “source of good through taxation” for the Philippines
The health department said that it was misleading to praise the tobacco industry’s role in raising tax revenues. In 2011, the cost of tobacco-related diseases was estimated at PHP177 billion ($3.54 billion) annually, the agency noted. This was seven times higher than the PHP25.9 billion collected in taxes from tobacco products.
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
More Calls for Tobacco Harm Reduction Ahead of COP9

Photo: andriano_cz
Activists continue to urge participants in the ninth Conference of the Parties (COP9) to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control to seriously consider tobacco harm reduction in their deliberations.
COP9 will take place Nov. 8-13 online. During the convention, delegates will debate measures to reduce smoking-related death and disease. To the frustration of many tobacco harm reduction proponents, the WHO has been suspicious of vaping and other reduced-risk products, viewing them as an industry tool to keep consumers hooked on nicotine.
“Tobacco harm reduction is a chance for smokers to switch from an extremely harmful to a significantly less harmful alternative,” the Independent European Vape Alliance (IEVA) wrote in a statement ahead of the gathering.

We would like the WHO, together with other representatives from politics and science, to develop a targeted strategy for reducing the damage caused by smoking.
Dustin Dahlmann, president, IEVA
“Unfortunately, the WHO has lost sight of this in recent years. But it is not too late to repent. It must focus on the future of millions of smokers worldwide—a future that is much brighter should they switch to vaping—rather than its own counterproductive ‘quit-or-die’ dogma.”
“As a European association that is independent of the tobacco industry, we would like the WHO, together with other representatives from politics and science, to develop a targeted strategy for reducing the damage caused by smoking. Of course we as an industry are ready for this critical dialogue,” said Dustin Dahlmann, president of IEVA.
“The World Health Organization’s failure to declare a global emergency in 2020 [in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic] will be repeated in 2021 when the WHO will likely abandon international tobacco harm reduction efforts and condemn millions of smokers to an early death,” said Nancy Loucas, a leading consumer advocate based in New Zealand.

The WHO got it totally wrong on Covid-19, and it’s no surprise they’ve also got it very wrong with safer nicotine products such as vaping.
Nancy Loucas, consumer advocate
“The WHO got it totally wrong on Covid-19, and it’s no surprise they’ve also got it very wrong with safer nicotine products such as vaping,” she added. “As an ex-smoker, vaping has improved my health and arguably saved my life, yet the WHO and its sponsor American Michael Bloomberg have pressured countries like mine to ban it.”
On Oct. 18, 100 international health experts sent a public letter urging the COP9 parties to take a more positive stance on tobacco harm reduction. That same month, the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction (GSTHR) released a report urging the WHO to update its policies, which the GSTHR described as “frozen in time” as they dated from before the arrival on the market of many less-harmful nicotine delivery devices.
A group of tobacco harm reduction experts will hold a round-the-clock broadcasting event Nov. 8-12, to challenge and scrutinize COP9, which will take placed behind closed doors.
November 5, 2021
A Tale of Two COPs

Image: Tobacco Reporter archive
This year, the first two weeks of November will witness two COPs (Conference of Parties), large policy gatherings aimed at moving the needle on ratified global U.N.-related conventions. Both have to do with health—individual, population and the planet’s health. Yet, one COP is attracting the leaders of the developed world as well as developing worlds in Glasgow, United Kingdom, along with another 20,000-odd stakeholders. The other COP will be held virtually and quietly from its secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat is tasked with supporting the global response to the threat from climate change. With 197 members, the UNFCCC has a near universal coverage. The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) Glasgow was kicked off on Oct. 31 with great fanfare, high expectations and drama befitting a Hollywood premiere—e.g., Greta Thunberg arrived on a “climate train,” a test in patience and endurance for Greta, her 150 fellow passengers, the media and the climate activists’ mob at Glasgow Central.
Throughout the course of these two weeks of negotiations, haggling and posturing, the best possible outcome from COP26 could be that all countries commit to keeping global warming limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That calls for some serious re-engineering of human behavior and entire societies. Millions of conventional jobs and livelihoods will be lost, millions more potentially created in the new green economy. Some would argue (and justify): Desperate times call for desperate action. Green economy advocates and solution providers, including transforming oil companies and automobile manufacturers, are in full attendance at the summit and are missing no photo-op to burnish their green credentials.

The UN climate change conference will consider the input of the manufacturers it seeks to regulate, many of which are eager to show how they can be part of the solution. (Photo: adrian_ilie825)
The other COP, of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), created by the U.N.’s World Health Organization and run by the FCTC secretariat, follows a completely different tack. It is notionally intended for addressing the harms to society and the world due to risky forms of smoked (cigarettes, bidis, cigars) and smokeless (khaini, gutkha, zarda, etc.) tobacco products that over a billion people consume today. The FCTC is ratified by most of the countries in the world (the USA and Indonesia being notable exceptions), and the ninth Conference of Parties from Nov. 8–13 will see yet another biannual get together making decisions that affect 1.3 billion tobacco users, their families and millions from the tobacco supply chain globally. However, it is held behind closed doors, driven by health activists that simply see the tobacco industry as the problem and tobacco users as AstroTurf for the tobacco industry. Neither are allowed anywhere near the meeting nor are the lay media.
The FCTC, in its simplest form, is a demand and supply reduction treaty, underpinned by tobacco harm reduction principles. Broadly, what this could mean in policy as well as practice is that those not currently using risky forms of tobacco products, especially children and young adults, should be disincentivized from initiation, and those currently using risky forms of tobacco should get the necessary help to quit. This may take the form of providing nicotine-replacement therapy, prescription medications and behavioral support. It could also mean that those involved in the supply chain, such as farmers and bidi worker women, should be given support to switch to alternative livelihoods.
Sixteen years on from the ratification of the FCTC, great progress has been made in adopting parts of the treaty that relate to demand reduction by prevention of initiation into national regulations. Advertising campaigns, tax hikes, health warnings and packaging and sale restrictions have led to significant reductions in initiation, especially among youth. On the other hand, support to current users of risky forms of tobacco remains wanting, lacking innovation and largely under-funded.
The nicotine in these products makes consumers dependent. The cancers, however, are caused by the toxic chemical mix in the smokeless products and from the smoke itself—but not the nicotine. Pharmaceutically licensed nicotine-replacement therapy products, in the form of gums and patches, are on the WHO’s model essential medicines list for tobacco dependence treatment. It is scientifically proven: Quitting risky forms of tobacco (cessation) is not easy; relapse is very common. The high retail price of the cessation products, poor availability and inadequate training of doctors in prescribing these cessation treatments means that current tobacco users miss out on any meaningful access and support.
It is easy to point to the tobacco industry’s morally and ethically unacceptable behavior for most of the 20th century that led to the smoking epidemic globally, and even today, to the manufacturers of gutkha and pan masala in India who are fueling an oral cancer epidemic. Based on this historical context, the COP organizers exclude this industry from their deliberations. Sadly, that exclusion extends to consumers, effectively the current and future patients suffering from tobacco dependence.
This raises a sticky question: Are the global public health community, led by the WHO’s FCTC signatories who meet every two years formally at the COP, simply giving up on the 1.3 billion current users of cigarettes, bidis, khaini and gutkha-like products, letting them die preventable premature deaths, for the want of adequate cessation products and support? Would public health not benefit from a wider range of innovative nicotine-replacement products, manufactured to high standards, regulated appropriately and specifically available as cessation aids for current adult users of risky tobacco products?

In stark contrast to the climate change COP26, at this tobacco-related COP9, manufacturers of cleaner nicotine products (the “solution providers” to the problem) and consumers (the victims of the problem) will be glaringly absent. (Photo: lezinav)
This COP season, it may be time to draw parallels between two very similar gatherings with diametrically opposite profiles and approaches. Climate change and tobacco-related harms—both are urgent issues facing humankind. Both are being addressed by global treaties and conventions. For both problems, a wide range of solutions are coming from old and new industries.
In the case of climate change, the Teslas of the world lead the rally. Conventional fossil fuel giants such as BP (of the Gulf of Mexico spill fame) and Shell are not far behind either, showcasing their renewables’ commitment in every ESG communication. The Volkswagen emissions scandal (from less than five years ago) is distant memory, and the automobile industry is at the table, providing cleaner cars by “electrifying” their offerings.
In tobacco cessation, underpinned by tobacco harm reduction principles, innovation came from a wide range of inventors and manufacturers globally: e-cigarettes from China, heated-tobacco products from Switzerland and the U.K., nicotine pouches from Sweden and cessation apps from the USA. Pharmaceutical manufacturers of conventional nicotine-replacement products and prescription medications are either withdrawing from the markets or not innovating any more. They have not made any visible effort to make their products available at affordable prices in the developing world—and there was never a huge hue and cry about that from public health.
None of the new innovative products are a silver bullet but promise to provide cleaner, safer nicotine to the billion-plus current consumers of risky forms of tobacco. In countries such as the U.K. and USA, where regulators are informed by scientific evidence and risk assessment, these products are regulated and allowed. Slowly but surely, this will transform the nicotine use profile in these countries, no doubt saving millions of lives and billions of dollars in future health costs from tobacco-related diseases. In Japan, previously known for its high smoking incidence among men, nearly 30 percent of the cigarette market has been replaced by heated-tobacco devices. These devices are increasingly acknowledged for their reduced toxicant exposure vis-a-vis cigarettes. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized the sale of a specific brand of heated device, an e-cigarette and a Swedish snus-style smokeless tobacco product for their reduced toxicant exposure and potential to reduce tobacco-related harms. In the U.K., e-cigarettes are one of the many options of quitting tools supported by national health bodies.
In stark contrast to the climate change COP26, at this tobacco-related COP9, manufacturers of cleaner nicotine products (the “solution providers” to the problem) and consumers (the victims of the problem) will be glaringly absent. In countries where regulators do not need the WHO’s blessings to make their own policies (the U.S., U.K. and increasingly the EU), innovation and better regulation will lead to a reversal of harms from risky 20th century tobacco products. In the developing world, including South Asia, the harms from tobacco will remain unabated in the absence of strong regulatory leadership and industry transformation.
Whether or not we can manage to curb the global temperature rises to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050, today’s direction of tobacco control as symbolized by COP9 will hinder access to safer nicotine alternatives to over 1.3 billion current users, 80 percent of whom live in developing countries, accounting for millions of preventable deaths in the next three decades.
Sudhanshu Patwardhan is a British-Indian, U.K.-licensed medical doctor who is passionate about helping people quit risky forms of tobacco. For the past two decades, he has lived and worked in three continents, doing senior roles in research, strategy and policy in the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries.

In his early years in tobacco harm reduction, his team of clinical researchers and lab scientists set the foundations for the assessment of reduced-risk products, now accepted by regulators and the industry as the definitive approach for duty of care and regulatory compliance. At Nicoventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of British American Tobacco, he was instrumental in enabling the first e-cigarette company acquisition by a global tobacco business. In his policy role there, Patwardhan shaped the creation of a global key opinion leader network in consumer advocacy and public health champions. .

With the British Standards Institution, Patwardhan led the creation of the world’s first vaping products’ standards for safety and quality in 2015 and the BSI Online Age Checking specifications in collaboration with the Westminster-based Digital Policy Alliance in 2018. .

In 2018, he co-founded the Centre for Health Research and Education that now has a team of over 40 medical and public health experts globally working in cancer prevention. Patwardhan splits time between the U.K. and South Asia on tobacco harm reduction projects that address the needs of the most disadvantaged tobacco users. He is also a board director of Art Asia, a charity with a mission to communicate the rich and exciting experience of South Asian Arts to the widest possible audiences.

November 3, 2021
Harm Reduction Activists to Broadcast During COP9

Image: sCOPe
Nancy Loucas
A group of tobacco harm reduction experts will hold a round-the-clock broadcasting event Nov. 8-12, coinciding with the Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP9) to the World health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
Dubbed “sCOPe,” or “streaming Consumers On Point everywhere,” the five-day livestream will be simulcast via YouTube and Facebook. Presenters and panelists will challenge and scrutinize COP9, questioning, for example, who is influencing and funding its efforts to demonize vaping.
“Before the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers were planning to front up to COP in person and show media our increasing anger for being shut out, once again, from the proceedings,” said sCOPe organizer Nancy Loucas, executive coordinator of the Coalition of Asia Pacific Harm Reduction Advocates. “The FCTC’s decision to delay COP9 and host it exclusively online, with no discussions to be publicly released, meant consumers had to take alternative action. Hence, the development of sCOPe,”
“sCOPe is our response to being excluded from the table, as the main stakeholders, of the discussion and decision-making process that directly impacts our health and our right to make informed decisions,” she said.
October 22, 2021
100 THR Experts Pen Letter Against WHO Vapor Stance
One hundred tobacco harm reduction (THR) experts have published a joint letter challenging the World Health Organization’s (WHO) approach to tobacco science and policy. The group is urging members of the Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-9) of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a global intergovernmental treaty in which the WHO plays a major role, to encourage the WHO to support and promote the inclusion of tobacco harm reduction into its regulatory advisements.
Credit: Igor Golovnev.
“Smoke-free nicotine products offer a promising route to reducing the harms arising from smoking. There is compelling evidence that smoke-free products are much less harmful than cigarettes and that they can displace smoking for individuals and at the population level,” the letter states. “Regrettably, [the] WHO has been dismissive of the potential to transform the tobacco market from high-risk to low-risk products. [The] WHO is rejecting a public health strategy that could avoid millions of smoking-related deaths.”
The letter was published on Oct. 18 and will be sent to COP-9 delegates. In a joint statement, Ruth Bonita, former director of WHO Department of NCD Surveillance, and Robert Beaglehole, former director of the WHO Department of Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, stated that they were “extremely disappointed by WHO’s illogical and perverse approach” to reduced-harm nicotine delivery products, such as vaping.
“A key challenge in global tobacco control is to assist cigarette smokers to transition from burnt tobacco products to much less harmful options that provide the nicotine without the toxic smoke,” the statement reads. “[The] WHO’s continuing disregard of the wealth of evidence on the value of these products is condemning millions of smokers to preventable disease and premature death.”
The letter goes on to make seven points about the current vaping regulatory environment, such as the value of vaping in THR and the unintended consequences of poor regulatory policies. The authors then go on to make six suggestions for the WHO to consider:

Make tobacco harm reduction a component of the global strategy to meet the Sustainable
Development Goals for health, notably SDG 3.4 on non-communicable diseases.

Insist that any WHO policy analysis makes a proper assessment of benefits to smokers or would-be
smokers, including adolescents, as well as risks to users and non-users of these products.

Require any policy proposals, particularly prohibitions, to reflect the risks of unintended
consequences, including potential increases in smoking and other adverse responses.

Properly apply Article 5.3 of the FCTC to address genuine tobacco industry malpractice, but not to
create a counterproductive barrier to reduced-risk products that have public health benefits or to
prevent critical assessment of industry data strictly on its scientific merits.

Make the FCTC negotiations more open to stakeholders with harm-reduction perspectives, including
consumers, public health experts, and some businesses with significant specialised knowledge not
held within the traditional tobacco control community.

Initiate an independent review of WHO and the FCTC approach to tobacco policy in the context of
the SDGs. Such a review could address the interpretation and use of science, the quality of policy
advice, stakeholder engagement, and accountability and governance. The Independent Panel for
Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR), initiated to evaluate the response to the COVID-19
pandemic, offers such a model.
Another signatory, David Sweanor, adjunct professor of law, chair of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics University of Ottawa, Canada, in a separate statement, said that effective public health efforts need to be based on science, reason and humanism. Instead, the WHO is aligning itself against all three when dealing with nicotine.
“The result is that one of the greatest opportunities to improve global health, separating nicotine use from smoke inhalation, is being squandered. Global trust in health authorities, and the WHO in particular, has never been so important,” the statement reads. “Yet the WHO is abandoning science, rationality and humanism on nicotine and instead apparently pursuing the moralistic abstinence-only agenda of external funders. This is a public health tragedy that extends well beyond the unnecessary sickening of the billion-plus people who smoke cigarettes.”
October 18, 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
Group: UK COP9 Delegation Must Support Science
A parliamentary group in the U.K. has released a report that criticizes anti-vaping groups funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies for being hostile to tobacco harm reduction (THR). The report also states that Bloomberg diminishes the rights of consumers and vapers in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) such as the Philippines.
Credit: Olrat
The UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for Vaping (APPG) said these anti-vaping “civil society observers” will be allowed to participate in the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Conference of the Parties 9 (FCTC COP 9) in November this year, concluding that the WHO continues to attempt to discredit UK’s science and policy approach to address the smoking problem, reports the Manila Bulletin. It said THR is a public health approach which is supposedly one of the original commitments of FCTC.
The APPG warned about the participation of The Union, a group funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, as well as other anti-vaping non-government organizations in the FCTC COP 9 meeting in November. The APPG is asking the UK delegation to the FCTC COP9 meeting to ensure that its national experience and real-life evidence/data are reflected in the discussions within the WHO.
The APPG also wanted to ensure that the WHO would not move away from the fundamental objectives set forth by the FCTC given its original commitment to harm reduction—a public health approach being opposed by some influential non-government organizations. “The majority of NGOs listed as ‘Observers’ are hostile to the concept of tobacco harm reduction and thus the UK’s policy approach. For instance, ‘The Union’ has advocated a complete ban on e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products in low and middle-income countries, which are home to 80 percent of the world’s smokers,” the APPG said in the report.
July 26, 2021
Think Tank to Debate COP9 Impact on Vapers
The U.K. Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) will host a discussion today on the impact of the World Health Organization’s ninth Conference of the Parties (COP9) to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which is scheduled to take place on Nov. 21 in the Netherlands.
The COP is the supreme decision-making body of the FCTC, where all parties to the FCTC meet biennially to review the implementation of the convention and adopt the new guidance. For the first time since leaving the European Union, in November 2021, the U.K. will send a delegation to the COP.
According to the IEA, COP9 poses a significant threat to the U.K.’s approach to harm reduction policy. “The WHO is increasingly, and against the clear evidence, positioning itself as an enemy of vaping,” the think tank states on its website. “The U.K. is a world leader in tobacco harm reduction, and a significant reason for this is our comparatively liberal approach to vaping products and e-cigarettes.”
Participants in the IEA forum will discuss who represents the U.K. at COP, how decisions are reached, the impact of these decisions on the U.K.’s harm reduction progress and the country’s 2030 smoke-free target, among other topics.
Speakers includes IEA Director General Mark Littlewood (chair), Matt Ridley (vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Vaping), Christopher Snowdon (IEA head of lifestyle economics) and Louis Houlbrooke (NZ Taxpayers Union).
The discussion can be followed live on the screen or here.
June 24, 2021