As the ninth session of the conference of the parties (COP9) to the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) approaches, there are growing calls for WHO to not only adopt tobacco harm reduction but also to adopt a modernized approach to its tobacco policies.
UK health agency KAC's Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction’s (GSTHR) latest report, Fighting the Last War: WHO and International Tobacco Control, revealed that the current implementation of FCTC is a “global public health failure.”
Citing the UK and New Zealand, both parties to FCTC and both having seen significant decreases in smoking after implementing tobacco harm reduction policies alongside tobacco control policies, GSTHR says the fight against smoking is “now being actively undermined by WHO,” as the agency seems to remain staunchly opposed to safer products driven by what GSTHR says is “ideological opposition to tobacco harm reduction from influential philanthropic funders [which] has distorted global policymaking.”
Professor Gerry Stimson of KAC, said, “At COP9, government delegations must prevent the slide into outright nicotine prohibition. This would see a return to smoking for many people and many millions more never able to quit successfully. The age of combustion - for tobacco and for fossil fuels - has to end."
A hundred nicotine science and policy specialists from around the world also came together in a joint letter calling on the 182 countries to FCTC to “encourage WHO to support and promote the inclusion of tobacco harm reduction” into FCTC as well as modernize the approach to tobacco policy.
Their letter went on to say, “Regrettably, WHO has been dismissive of the potential to transform the tobacco market from high-risk to low-risk products. WHO is rejecting a public health strategy that could avoid millions of smoking-related deaths.”
In the letter, the specialists suggested that parties to FCTC take a more assertive and questioning approach to WHO’s advocacy on smoke-free alternatives to smoking and make tobacco harm reduction a component of the global strategy to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for health. They also recommended that FCTC negotiations be made more open to consumers, public health experts, and businesses with “specialized knowledge” not held within the traditional tobacco control community.