The WHO’s Campaign Against Safe Nicotine
Civil society is largely excluded. Journalists are barely tolerated. Outsiders appear only in tightly controlled “public sessions,” while all substantive negotiations occur behind locked doors. These meetings are dominated by the FCTC Secretariat and a small constellation of Bloomberg-funded NGOs that orbit it. What they endorse becomes the agenda; what they oppose is often treated as illegitimate. That structure is an essential backdrop to the story of COP11.
The most revealing episode from COP11 was not about taxes or liability. It was the campaign against a small group of countries—Saint Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, New Zealand, the Philippines, and others—that dared to raise an uncomfortable but obvious point: safer nicotine products exist, millions use them, and the treaty should look honestly at the evidence. For this, they were attacked, shamed, and accused of serving tobacco interests. The charge is not only false, but a calculated lie designed to protect the ideological authority of the FCTC machine.
The insiders—the Bloomberg-funded NGOs, Secretariat technocrats, and a few entrenched academics—know harm reduction works. They know adult smokers switch when safer products are available. And they know acknowledging this would expose the limits of the FCTC’s own strategies. Rather than confront that reality, they target the nations that speak it out loud.
A Simple Request: “Can We Look at the Evidence?”
Saint Kitts & Nevis put forward a reasonable proposal at COP10: create a working group on tobacco harm reduction, grounded in Article 1(d) of the treaty, which explicitly defines tobacco control as including harm reduction. It was bureaucratic rather than revolutionary—essentially a request for evidence review. By COP11, the same states, joined by Dominica and quietly supported by others, backed language recognizing the difference between combustible and non-combustible products. New Zealand came not with theory but with results. Smoking there has collapsed faster than almost anywhere else, driven by vaping and other safer products regulated within a robust national framework. The Philippines brought its new law on vapes and heated tobacco, debated and passed domestically, reflecting local science and consumer realities.
None of these countries is a tobacco industry hub. None were asking for smoking deregulation. They were asking for proportionate regulation based on risk. Their positions reflected either data, national policy, or both.
The FCTC Ecosystem’s Response: Smear, Distract, Invent “Interference”
Before delegates even arrived, the Secretariat set the trap. The COP11 agenda omitted Article 1(d)’s harm-reduction clause and instead framed the discussion under Article 5.3—the anti-industry article. This reframing transformed a scientific question into a suspicion of misconduct. The message was unmistakable: any mention of relative risk would be treated as potential interference.
Bloomberg-funded Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids then launched a public campaign accusing small Caribbean governments of being targeted by tobacco companies—an allegation made without evidence. The Global Alliance for Tobacco Control piled on by giving Saint Kitts & Nevis and Dominica its “Dirty Ashtray Award,” a childish ritual meant to shame any delegation that challenges anti-THR orthodoxy. Meanwhile, the University of Bath’s Tobacco Tactics platform produced another round of insinuations, asserting that THR positions are inherently industry-aligned, regardless of their origin.
This was not policy analysis. It was ideological enforcement: delegations were told that any deviation from the Secretariat’s anti-THR line would be punished and publicly delegitimized.
They Know Harm Reduction Works
The dishonesty of these attacks is compounded by the fact that the insiders know harm reduction succeeds wherever it is permitted. Sweden has nearly eliminated smoking because adults switched to snus and nicotine pouches. Japan experienced a historic decline in cigarette sales after heated tobacco products became widely available. Norway’s smoking rate collapsed as snus use rose, especially among women. New Zealand’s rapid fall in smoking is already the most dramatic in the developed world.
These are not industry inventions. They are real-world public health outcomes. They demonstrate that innovation, not prohibition, has driven the most rapid reductions in smoking ever observed. Yet none of these examples were meaningfully acknowledged in Panama. To admit success in these countries would be to admit failure at the treaty level: after twenty years, the FCTC has produced far slower declines in smoking than expected, and many of its core measures have stalled.
Recognizing harm reduction would force the Secretariat to explain why the one proven mechanism for accelerating smoking declines—offering safer alternatives—is the one it refuses to consider. This is why dissenting countries had to be attacked, not heard.
The Big Lie: “These Countries Are Doing Industry’s Bidding”
Portraying New Zealand as an industry pawn is absurd. It has one of the most aggressive anti-smoking strategies in the world, built around a legislative commitment to reduce harm. Accusing Saint Kitts & Nevis or Dominica of being industry-aligned is even more outrageous. They have no tobacco industry presence. Their proposals were administrative requests for evidence evaluation—exactly what international treaty bodies are supposed to do.
Calling these countries “industry fronts” is not a misunderstanding. It is a deliberate tactic to intimidate smaller nations, discredit any discussion of relative risk, and prevent harm reduction from gaining a formal foothold inside the FCTC. And it comes from groups whose own budgets dwarf those of the small nations they attack. When Bloomberg-funded NGOs accuse tiny delegations of being captured by private interests, the cynicism is obvious.
What COP11 Actually Proved
COP11 demonstrated how deeply the FCTC has become trapped in an ideological posture that cannot survive honest scrutiny. The treaty’s leadership would rather shame sovereign countries than admit that safer nicotine products reduce harm. They would rather smear democratically accountable governments than confront the weakness of their own approach. Their response to evidence was not to debate it, but to suppress it.
The countries that spoke up—Saint Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, New Zealand, the Philippines, and others—showed more integrity than the system that tried to silence them. They raised legitimate, science-based concerns, grounded either in national outcomes or in the treaty text itself. For that, they were targeted, caricatured, and treated as threats.
Harm reduction works. The people who claim otherwise know it. And until the FCTC is willing to grapple honestly with that fact, its biennial gatherings will continue to be political theater rather than genuine public-health leadership. The tragedy is not that dissenting countries were attacked. The tragedy is that millions who could benefit from safer alternatives will remain unserved because those same insiders refuse to let the treaty confront the truth.
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