A Powerful Week at TPA’s Good COP

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance was excited to kick off our very first Good COP / Bad COP, Conference of the People, in Panama City, Panama last week. Good COP was a first of its kind, a counter event to the taxpayer-funded World Health Organization’s Conference of the Parties (COP) of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), also known as Bad COP.

Originally scheduled for November, but delayed by the WHO to February, the 10th COP had delegates from more than 140 different countries discussing various proposals to the FCTC treaty. COPs are notoriously secretive and lack transparency and outright refusal to allow certain sectors participate or even watch debates among delegates. COPs also don’t acknowledge the strides tobacco harm reduction products have done to help people stop smoking combustible cigarettes. This is bad news for the 1.3 billion adults around the world who still smoke.

TPA’s Good COP was in direct response to the WHO’s lack of accountability. More pointedly, TPA gathered more than two dozen experts from 14 different countries, who represented the consumers, science, and policy of tobacco harm reduction.

While the WHO refused to acknowledge transformative technologies which have helped to rapidly decelerate smoking rates, Good COP provided a five-day live stream of panels with experts discussing their own stories of quitting smoking, the science behind smoking and tobacco harm reduction products, and the varying regulatory policies countries have put in place and effects on adult consumer access.

TPA’s Good COP experts provided an immense amount of content demonstrating how worldwide the smoking problem is – and how powerful tobacco harm reduction is helping adults quit smoking. Some notable quotes from our experts:

On the science:

• “You can’t fight smoking by fighting tobacco harm reduction. It’s impossible… In Greece, we found that only 5% of smokers believed that e-cigarettes were far less harmful than smoking. Less than 5% of smokers knew the truth. Which is unheard of in a Western country. This means that we’re not only doing something wrong as public health experts, but it’s a criminal act, because harm reduction is a human rights issue.” – Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos (Greece)
• “A scientific community…should look at products without any bias. They should not be influenced by external factors – let the scientists decide what is good, and what is bad.” – Dr. Rohan Sequeira (India)
• “You see ludicrous claims appearing in the media…and even amongst doctors…the belief that nicotine is itself harmful and causes lung cancer…so it’s hardly surprising that the general public tends to believe these things.” — Chris Snowdon, United Kingdom

On the consumers:

• “I read and I learn – if we do the same and offer these opportunities for people to connect with other experts, they too will be empowered.” — Maria Papaioannoy (Canada)
• “I personally see it as lazy legislation in South Africa. They follow the WHO much like a church, and are not in the position or don’t have the ability to test those guidelines in their own environment.” – Kurt Yeo (South Africa)

On the policy:

• “I personally see it as lazy legislation in South Africa. They follow the WHO much like a church, and are not in the position or don’t have the ability to test those guidelines in their own environment.” – Kurt Yeo (South Africa)
• “If I were to talk to the WHO people right now, I would tell them they need to make sure that the monitoring is done correctly – you need to operate based on results, not based on emotion or ideology.” – Dr. Riccardo Polosa (Italy)
• “In Australia taxes are so high…you saw 60 arson attacks and at least 2 murders because of the gangland war that’s involved in the illicit tobacco trade in Australia.” – Tim Andrews (USA)

Unlike Bad COP, Good COP panels were and are still available to watch online at TPA’s YouTube channel.

While it is hard to determine the success of a counter event, the WHO was aware of Good COP’s event that took place just 2.2 kilometers from the Panama Convention Center where the WHO hosted Bad COP. A few Bad COP attendees showed up to our event one day.  Unlike the Bad COP meeting, TPA offered the visitors to stay and be part of the conversation.  They declined, missing an opportunity to hear the truth about real tobacco harm reduction.

Fortunately, Bad COP was unable to come to consensus on the topic of tobacco harm reduction products, including the regulation of e-cigarettes. This is a welcome delay as a few weeks prior, a WHO official announced that the organization supports total bans on e-cigarettes, citing overinflated youth use and media headlines as justification.

Good COP was meant to be a launching vehicle into a broader coalition in the tobacco harm reduction community, aligning our voices into one powerful narrative that truly covers the entire world of tobacco harm reduction. TPA was excited to meet so many passionate and well-informed experts and are looking forward to working with them on future Good COP and countering the Bad COP narrative.