Summer Reading: The War on Harm Reduction Accelerates During This Year’s WHO Meeting

The taxpayer-funded World Health Organization (WHO) touts itself as a leader in tobacco control. But, their actions don’t match their words. The WHO’s 9th report on tobacco use congratulated countries on imposing regressive taxes and draconian prohibitions while largely ignoring novel tobacco harm reduction products.

Parties to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) will meet in Panama in November for the 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10). Given the alarmism prevalent in their most recent report (and the continued influx of funding from anti-vaping billionaire Michael Bloomberg), COP10 will likely largely ignore the science of alternatives to cigarettes, as well as consumers who rely on these products to quit smoking and remain smoke-free.

To ensure that conversations on adult accessing safer alternatives to smoking are not lost on delegates, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) is hosting a Good COP/Bad COP war room in Panama City, Panama coinciding with the staging of the WHO’s FCTC’s COP10. Gathering experts and consumers throughout the world, the war room is designed to respond in real-time to the efforts made by misguided delegates to thwart innovation and technological advances that make tobacco products safer.

Background

The FCTC “is the first treaty negotiated under” WHO, and “opened for signature on 16 June to 22 June 2003.” The WHO claims that the FCTC is “an evidence-based treaty that reaffirms the rights of all people to the highest standard of health.” Notably, the treaty “asserts the importance of demand reduction strategies as well as supply issues.”

Demand reduction strategies covered by the FCTC treaty include: increasing the price and taxes on tobacco products, prohibiting smoking in various settings, regulating tobacco products including ingredients, packaging, and marketing, and reducing demand through measures “concerning tobacco dependence and cessation.” Supply reduction provisions include reducing illicit trade, sales to minors, as well as supporting “economically viable alternative activities.”

Unfortunately, in the 44 pages of treaty text, “harm reduction” is mentioned once. Defining tobacco control, the treaty means “a range of supply, demand and harm reduction strategies that aim to improve the health of a population by eliminating or reducing their consumption of tobacco products and exposure to tobacco smoke.”

In its latest report, the WHO claims that “[n]ew and emerging tobacco nicotine products pose a serious threat to smoke-free measures.” The taxpayer-funded agency goes on to claim that novel products such as e-cigarettes are not effective in helping adults to quit smoking and that they are “targeting specifically at children and young adults.” The WHO also claims that there is not enough evidence to support cessation and health claims of heated tobacco products.

Real Tobacco Harm Reduction

Governments across the world from the United Kingdom to New Zealand are actively promoting that their citizens switch to e-cigarettes. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized the sale of nearly two dozen vapor products finding that they “could benefit adult smokers who switch to these products … by reducing their exposure to harmful chemicals.”

The introduction of heated tobacco products in countries like Japan has led to a remarkable decrease in smoking rates. A 2020 study conducted by researchers associated with the American Cancer Society remarking that the introduction of one heated tobacco product “likely reduced cigarette sales” in the country. The U.S. FDA has also permitted the same product to be marketed in the United States as a “modified risk tobacco product” after finding that the “it was appropriate to promote the public health.” Specifically, the HTP is marketed with a “reduced exposure claim.” This is because the product heats tobacco rather than burning it, which “significantly reduces the production of harmful and potentially harmful chemicals,” and that “switching completely from conventional cigarettes to [the product] significantly reduces [the] body’s exposure to harmful or potentially harmful chemicals.”

WHO Misses the Mark on Tobacco Harm Reduction

Though COP10 is only a few months away, the WHO has released a very limited provisional agenda to be presented to delegates from around the globe, but it is apparent from supporting documents that the FCTC will endorse a global regulatory scheme in restricting adult access to safer alternatives to smoking.

In a report concerning Articles 9 and 10 of the FCTC, the agency is recommending Parties endorse global regulations for novel and emerging products, but in order to do so, certain parameters must be adjusted to come under the remit of the treaty.

For example, the agency intends for delegates to redefine what cessation is: giving up traditional harmful cigarettes and switching to less harmful products or moving entirely off any nicotine or tobacco-containing product.

The agency must also reconcile the definition of smoke. As noted in the original treaty documents, harm reduction encompasses reducing the harm related to tobacco smoke. E-cigarettes and vapor products emit a vaporized aerosol, smokeless tobacco such as snus and nicotine pouches emit zero smoke and/or aerosols. As such, users and non-users are subjected to little-to-none of the harms caused by traditional tobacco smoke.

Finally, and a continuation of previous indications, the agency is maintaining its stance against flavored products. In the report on Articles 9 and 10, the agency claims that flavors “are often cited as the primary reason for youth to try a tobacco or nicotine product,” yet data from country-wide youth surveys indicate that flavors are not the most cited reason for using novel tobacco products.

In an August 2023 report from Action on Smoking and Health in the UK, the most cited reason for youth using e-cigarettes was curiosity. Among U.S. youth who were currently vaping in 2021, nearly half (43.4 percent) cited using them because they felt anxious, depressed, and/or stressed.

Conversely, a survey of almost 70,000 American adult e-cigarette users found that 83.2 percent and 72.3 percent were vaping fruit and dessert flavors, respectively. A 2020 study found that adults who used non-tobacco flavored e-cigarettes were more likely to quit smoking than those who used only tobacco-flavored.

For the past several years, TPA has been monitoring adult and youth tobacco and vapor product use to educate lawmakers on the tremendous benefit tobacco harm reduction products can bring to adults who smoke and the states as well.

Throughout the coming months, TPA will be actively monitoring activities from the WHO and global governments. TPA will also be providing content from the Consumer Center team and the experts and consumers that will be at Good COP/Bad COP to better highlight the challenges that the global tobacco harm reduction community faces.