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Tag: Clive Bates

  • THR Advocates Criticize COP11 Transparency, Agenda

    THR Advocates Criticize COP11 Transparency, Agenda

    As the Eleventh session of the Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the WHO FCTC opened yesterday, many tobacco/nicotine industry and tobacco harm reduction advocates watched the livestream intently, as only parts of the first and fifth days are scheduled to be made available to the public and media, a fact that draws significant disapproval from the event’s critics. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO opened the event, saying, “We are so used to hearing ‘tobacco kills us’, it no longer shocks us… If tobacco were a virus, we would call it a pandemic.” According to his X account, he called upon Parties to advance implementation, be aware of “tobacco industry tactics,” and invited Parties to join the FCTC.

    Ghebreyesus’ speech was criticized on X by the World Vapers’ Alliance, which said, “First up, @DrTedros, first lie. He claims vapes and pouches are not harm-reduction products but harm production. Science and millions of former smokers strongly disagree. He further says there is no evidence for their net public health benefit. This is wrong. Every smoker who switches to less harmful alternatives gains clear health benefits. It’s not rocket science.”

    One of the more prominent critics of COP11 is Clive Bates, the director of Counterfactual Consulting Limited, an organization that attempts to bring information from the closed meetings to public view.

    “The FCTC COP has extremely poor openness, transparency, and viewpoint diversity,” Bates wrote on his website. “Delegates should welcome and demand a broader range of observers at COP meetings and greater transparency to avoid a situation where one billionaire funder can speak through dozens of ‘civil society’ organizations.”  

    Leading up to COP11, once the agenda was released, Bates offered a commentary on each section, which he summed up by saying, “In overview, the agenda is weak, with the greatest priority given to matters that fall outside the FCTC, and a contemptuous dismissal of Parties’ request for a balanced and objective discussion of the potential for tobacco harm reduction. The COP should focus on the big issue: How to drive down global smoking?”  

    Listed on the agenda for today (November 18), was the introduction of the Convention Secretariat report, titled “Implementation of measures to prevent and reduce tobacco consumption, nicotine addiction and exposure to tobacco smoke, and the protection of such measures from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in light of the tobacco industry’s narrative on ‘harm reduction’ (Articles 5.2(b) and 5.3 of the WHO FCTC) – proposed by Parties.”  

    “This is the worst FCTC COP paper I have ever read, and that is quite an achievement,” wrote Bates. “Two main issues should disturb Parties, whatever view delegates take on the substantive matters: 1. The contemptuous and dismissive attitude towards one or more Parties seeking a substantive discussion of a serious public health strategy. I have never seen a convention secretariat behave in this way in this or any other convention.  2. The quality of the analysis and understanding shown in the paper about the subject under discussion, tobacco harm reduction. This is dismissed as a form of tobacco industry interference. Yet, it has the support of several Parties, high-credibility organizations such as the Royal College of Physicians, and many of the world’s top independent experts.” 

  • COP11, Good Gop 2.0 Both Open in Geneva

    COP11, Good Gop 2.0 Both Open in Geneva

    The 11th Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) began today (November 17) in Geneva, bringing together global health leaders and over 1,400 delegates from 183 countries for the week-long event. The conference “aims to strengthen international cooperation to combat tobacco use, rising nicotine addiction, and environmental harm caused by cigarette products.” Discussions are expected to revolve around familiar topics such as youth smoking, flavorings, and cigarette butt pollution. Delegates are also expected to address “aggressive marketing” of tobacco and nicotine products, youth vaping, and strategies to combat the illicit tobacco trade.

    Running parallel, and just steps away from COP11, is Good Cop 2.0, an event hosted by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, designed to be a rapid-response and fact-checking forum to counter discussions from the WHO. “The event aims to unite taxpayer-, free-market-, and harm-reduction organizations to challenge misinformation and present alternative, evidence-based perspectives. It is intended to be an open forum for consumers, independent scientists, and journalists who are often excluded from WHO’s closed-door sessions.”

    Speaking on one of the Good Cop panels today, Clive Bates, a public health consultant and director of Counterfactual Consulting, summed up WHO critics’ frustration that stems from having decisions that will influence global tobacco control and public health policies for years to come being made in secrecy, behind closed doors, with virtually no input from consumers or industry.

    “There’s no harm and having discussions about the frontier ideas of tobacco control,” said Bates. “[But COP11 is] a really graphic illustration of the weakness of expert groups. The experts that have been chosen to come up with these figures are [basically] fringe fanatics in the tobacco control world. In any normal conversation with users or consumers, a lot of these ideas would seem mad.

    “That’s the danger of getting away from the working groups. The working groups of parties have to think about the politics of actually delivering this to the actual public, whereas the expert groups are fanatics pushing forward an agenda to the extremes of what they think they can get away with.”

  • Clive Bates: WHO Using Tobacco’s History to Poison Good Science

    Clive Bates: WHO Using Tobacco’s History to Poison Good Science

    In a forceful keynote at the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF) in Brussels, Clive Bates, Director of Counterfactual, called for a fundamental reset in global tobacco control policy, arguing that current frameworks such as the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) have failed to adapt to innovation and evidence.

    “Prevalence is falling, but the global population is rising,” Bates said. “That means the total number of smokers is still going up — and so are the 7.5 million deaths each year caused by smoking.” He emphasized that quitting smoking at any age provides significant health benefits, but argued that international tobacco control remains stuck in the past. “The mission hasn’t changed — stop people from smoking — but the methods are outdated. We have new tools, and ignoring them is indefensible.”

    Bates described alternative nicotine products such as vaping, heated tobacco, and smokeless options as “the disruption the FCTC never anticipated.” He pointed to Sweden’s success as proof of concept: “Sweden has higher nicotine use than Germany but lower cancer rates. That’s what harm reduction looks like.” Yet, he criticized the European Union for maintaining its ban on snus — the very product that helped Sweden virtually eliminate smoking. “What if, instead of banning snus, we promoted it?” he asked. “Why are we still doing things that contradict our stated public health goals?”

    Turning his critique toward the WHO, Bates condemned the organization’s stance that there is “no evidence” reduced-risk products are safer than cigarettes. “That’s shocking,” he said. “Harm reduction is being dismissed as a tobacco industry ploy, using the industry’s reputation to poison good science.”

    He argued that the FCTC has institutionalized a “toxic” anti-industry bias that blocks collaboration and progress. “If the tobacco industry likes it, it must be bad — that’s the logic codified into policy. There’s no room for alignment with that attitude,” he said. Bates noted that several major companies have already shifted dramatically — “PMI now earns 41% of its revenue from smoke-free products” — yet the global framework continues to punish rather than encourage transformation.

    “The WHO gave an award to a man in India for banning reduced-harm products in a country with 100 million smokers,” Bates said. “That’s not leadership — that’s negligence.”

    He concluded with a clear call to action: “If you want better outcomes, get the smoking rate down as fast as possible. The demand for nicotine won’t disappear, but we can make it vastly safer — and we can do it without coercion. Let consumers make informed choices. That’s how we save lives.”