Tag: FCTC

Doubling Down on Failure

Photo: v-a-butenkov
The FCTC COPs comprise a counterproductive, environment-busting waste of time and money.
By George Gay
If COP10 proved one thing, it is that there should be no COP11.
The continuing existence of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which is seemingly controlled by a coterie of authoritarian, publicity-shy, self-appointed morality overseers and to which supposedly sovereign governments humbly send their delegates to worship at the altar of the FCTC Secretariat, is an affront to the environment and to the taxpayers who part fund these COP affairs and whose taxes could be better spent feeding and otherwise providing for people currently in desperate need.
From the information that seeps out, everything that gets done at these secretive affairs could be done through emails and the odd telephone call. It seems unconscionable, verging on suicidal, that, with 2023 having marked the first time that every day within a year, the temperature exceeded 1 degree Celsius above the 1850–1900 preindustrial level, with close to 50 percent of days 1.5 degrees above and two days in November, for the first time, more than 2 degrees above,* more than 1,000 COP delegates should kick off 2024 by flying to Panama supposedly as part of a health initiative. This was insanity on stilts.
I asked the organizers what the carbon footprint of the event was, but answer came there none, so one must assume that while the secretariat likes to interest itself in the environmental impact of tobacco, it is unconcerned about keeping its own house in order. In other words, it is safe to assume that COP10 was a totally avoidable environmental disaster waved through so a few people could carry forward a vanity project aimed at their trying to interfere with the lifestyle choices of smokers.
Why should the diktats dreamed up by a tiny clique of would-be tobacco prohibitionists and lifestyle controllers be allowed to affect the choices of 1 billion adult smokers?
Limiting Choices and Threatening Livelihoods
Why should the diktats dreamed up by a tiny clique of would-be tobacco prohibitionists and lifestyle controllers be allowed to affect the choices of 1 billion adult smokers? Why should they be allowed to threaten the livelihoods of millions of tobacco growers, their families and those who work for tobacco companies and allied businesses?
The futility of COP10 was nicely, though unintentionally, summed up by one of the European Union delegates when, in his three-minute introductory slot, he said that the EU had been at the forefront of tobacco control and a driving force in negotiating the FCTC and its protocols, now an important component of the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development (SD). Then, without offering any reason or apportioning any blame, he said that at the midway point of the 2030 SD agenda, 85 percent of the SD goals were off track and that nearly a third of the targets were in regression. Turning to the home front, he said that despite the introduction of tobacco control legislation and policies, smoking rates in the EU remained high, again without questioning why this might be the case.
Meanwhile, seemingly oblivious to the failures he had described, the delegate started to sum up by talking of the need to redouble joint efforts by saying that the EU remained fully committed to the FCTC and adding that by working together during the conference, delegates could take a step forward in their global tobacco control agenda. At first, I thought the delegate had taken as advice Walt Kelly’s put-down, “having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts.” But then I realized this was not true because whereas I had assumed the main objective was to encourage people to quit tobacco smoking, the EU delegate’s objective was seemingly to implement WHO measures whether they worked or not.
He finished by saying, “Together, we can deliver sustainable progress and pave the way for a tobacco-free world where people can enjoy healthy lives with no one left behind.” Here we were into Candide territory where everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Fortunately, the Ukraine delegate was there to remind delegates that this was not the best of all possible worlds and that tobacco consumption goes up when people are under stress, especially when they are constantly under the threat of death because their territory has been invaded by the forces of another country.
Whereas I had assumed the main objective was to encourage people to quit tobacco smoking, the EU delegate’s objective was seemingly to implement WHO measures whether they worked or not.
No Progress Without Change
Do the WHO and the delegates at these affairs really believe that by trying to force people to give up tobacco smoking, they will ensure everybody leads a healthy life, with no one left behind? What about the many people around the world daily facing rape, torture and violent death by invading forces or simply at the hands of their own less than benevolent governments? Will the multitudes afflicted by under-reported starvation, with their dying words, thank the delegates for saving them from the ills of tobacco? Will those vulnerable people deeply afraid of the arrival, on the WHO’s watch, of the next pandemic, offer thanks for being protected from a lifestyle choice they can protect themselves from? And do these delegates think that when we are all standing knee-deep in water following environmental breakdown, we shall thank them for removing the temptation of smoking, if for no other reason than because the matches would be too damp to light our tobacco? If they do, they need to get out more.
And they need to mend their bullying ways. One of the main reasons why there should be no COP11 is down to the disrespectful way the COP10 affair treated the Philippines. Apparently, the Global Alliance on Tobacco Control (GATC), previously known as the Framework Convention Alliance, in a puerile intervention in what should have been an adult debate, handed the country the GATC’s pathetic “Dirty Ashtray” award for having the temerity to promote tobacco harm reduction (THR). The Philippines is a sovereign democracy that decided after robust debate that the health of its people could be aided by allowing smokers access to safer alternatives to combustible cigarettes. It should continue along that path unless it, and it alone, decides otherwise. Its decisions should not be brought into question by a gaggle of anti-tobacco organizations whose existence is dependent on the continuing health of the tobacco industry but that is threatened by the rise of THR.
Indeed, the FCTC Secretariat and the GATC should, in any properly run debate, recuse themselves when matters of THR are raised since they could be seen as having a vested interest in not wanting the tobacco industry, especially the cigarette industry, to be fatally undermined—rather than suffering the flesh wounds the FCTC is able to inflict. That this is the case is supported by the existence of the COP byproduct, the Meeting of the Parties (MOP3, as it was in Panama) to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, whose love affair with “track-and-trace” systems is aimed at ensuring tobacco manufacturing businesses retain their customers.
The best reaction to the GATC’s intervention would be for all nations that are committed to THR to withdraw from the FCTC, which is not going to change its ideology. And without change, there can be no progress.
But for all COP10’s faults, I cannot help wondering whether hypocrisy isn’t the very worst. I would suggest that a significant proportion of the more than 1,000 delegates and officials who attended the Panama affair drink alcohol. And I would further suggest that a good proportion of those are addicted, or regular drinkers, some of whom might be “problem drinkers.” How, I wonder, do these drinkers manage to take the moral high ground and condemn smokers? Do they have to stand on their empties? Isn’t that a little unstable? Or perhaps they are used to such balancing acts. Perhaps they are used to using just one eye to examine the damage done to individuals by their smoking while shutting the one that might focus on the even greater damage done to populations and societies at large by drinking. Sadly, I doubt that many have the level of self-awareness that would encourage them to engage with such issues. They exist in a closed world of self-righteous indignation.
Although that is not the way the secretariat sees things. COP10 headlined a post-conference press note with possibly the longest heading ever written: “COP10 adopted historic decisions to protect the environment from the harms of tobacco and to address cross-border tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and the depiction of tobacco in entertainment media.”
How any of the above warrants the epithet “historic” is beyond me. The idea that what went on in Panama Feb. 5–10 should be regarded as famous or important in history is simply laughable. From what has emerged, COP10 was just another case of the same people using a lot of words to say the same things as they have said in the past. The only way that COP10 could write itself into the history books would be to do the decent thing and write FCTC COPs out of history.
Shrouded in Secrecy
How do I know that the same people said the same things? I don’t; I’m guessing; I have to guess. WHO COPs are conducted along the lines of secret society meetings by people supposedly so frightened that anybody should learn of the lack of intellectual rigor guiding their processes that delegates are required to go through a type of omerta ceremony, though, bizarrely, they seem to refer to it as the application of Chatham House Rules. Journalists and anybody with an independent mindset are not allowed to enter the hallowed halls of the conference.
Or are they? According to the press note with the longest heading, “COP10 was open to the media ….” But this does not chime with report after report by journalists and other interested parties who have complained about not being granted accreditation at any of the FCTC COPs due to a standard FCTC cop-out. One of the best brief reports on COP10 that I read was by Nick Powell for EU Reporter, who wrote, “Like many journalists, I was refused accreditation, but that made little difference as the conference voted to exclude the press.”
It is difficult to square these two takes on the situation. I did ask the organizers of the event about this, but answer came there none. All I can go on is that the overwhelming evidence points to the fact that Powell is correct. And this is probably admitted in the full sentence in the press note with the longest heading: “COP10 was open to the media, which had the opportunity to observe all public and open sessions, enabling reporters to witness more than 1,000 delegates from around the world unite over six days to consider and take action on important issues related to implementation of the convention.” It seems that this was obfuscation because there were few “public” or “open” sessions. I must admit that they had me fooled there for a minute, but then I thought that press notes, even those with the longest headings, were supposed to inform, not mislead.
Silly me. Health Policy Watch (HPW), obviously having read another post-event press note, quoted the WHO as saying: “Globally, some 200,000 hectares of land are cleared every year for tobacco cultivation, accounting for up to 20 percent of the annual increase in greenhouse gasses (GHGs).” But, as HPW pointed out, the WHO “failed to explain the source for the GHG estimate.”
And it could do with explaining something else. This is from the thoughtful COP10 conclusions of the International Tobacco Growers’ Association (ITGA): “ITGA, as the global tobacco growers’ representatives, observes with concern the impunity applied to using arguments against tobacco farming without providing reliable data. A fresh example is the WHO FCTC claim that 200,000 hectares of land are being cleared every year to grow tobacco when in fact, the harvested area of tobacco has consistently declined in the last decade.”
COP10 was just another case of the same people using a lot of words to say the same things as they have said in the past.
Avoiding Harm Reduction
But let me go back to Powell’s piece because it contained something else most interesting. He immediately followed the sentence quoted above with one saying: “That was shortly after the organizers cut off the microphone of a delegate who had the temerity to suggest that the priority should be harm reduction.” Of course, this incident makes a mockery of the statement in the press note with the longest heading that is quoted above as saying 1,000 delegates from around the world were united over six days. Clearly, they were not united. Questions around THR and less risky alternatives to combustible cigarettes had to be kicked down the road.
Powell did not say which delegate was cut off so rudely, and I can imagine there might be any number who would have wanted to make the point about THR, including those from the Philippines, of course, but I do know the U.K. delegation was supposed to make such an intervention. A meeting in the U.K.’s Houses of Parliament on Jan. 18 was told by Dame Andrea Leadsom, the parliamentary undersecretary of state for health and social care, that the U.K. delegation to COP10 would put forward its position that vapes comprised an important tool for helping adults quit tobacco smoking.
Leadsom was speaking during a backbench debate organized by Member of Parliament Andrew Lewer and aimed at uncovering what stance the government would take at COP10. Lewer, and others who spoke during the debate, were concerned that COP10 might resolve to establish equivalence in the regulation of combustible cigarettes and reduced-risk products, thus undermining the U.K.’s successful strategy of using vapes to help smokers quit their habit. Concern was expressed during the debate also about the fact that though the U.K. was a major contributor to the FCTC, it seemed diffident in its approach to tobacco COPs.
If backbenchers were hoping for a robust stance by the U.K. this time around, they must have been disappointed, at least in respect of the three-minute introductory presentation by the U.K. delegate, who did not mention THR and whose reference to vapes was confined to saying how the U.K. was concentrating on reducing the appeal of these products to children. I could not see whether she tugged her forelock when she declared commitment to the FCTC.
What a contrast to the New Zealand delegate’s brilliantly measured presentation where she spoke of the country’s pride in reaching tobacco control milestones and coming close to its goal of reducing the incidence of smoking below 5 percent. This had been achieved, she added, through a mix of FCTC-endorsed measures and the considered implementation of evidence-based harm reduction measures, including making available to smokers a range of nicotine-replacement products.
The question is, why should these pointless events continue. Most governments run by sentient creatures must know that FCTC COPs comprise a counterproductive, environment-busting waste of time and money. Safer alternative products can replace combustible cigarettes within a reasonable time. All that is needed is for those governments to apply and enforce consistent, light-touch but effective regulation to these products, ensure that messaging about them aimed at consumers is accurate, clear and consistent, and then sit back and let the private sector do the rest.
The FCTC has already ruled itself out of being a part of such a process.
*Figures from the European Commission’s Copernicus project
George Gay is Tobacco Reporter’s European editor, but his territory spans the globe. Based in London, George has covered the tobacco industry since 1982, initially for a U.K.-based publication and since 2004 for Tobacco Reporter. George’s understanding of industry issues, combined with his keen sense of observation and dry wit, have earned him a loyal following among Tobacco Reporter’s readers.

May 1, 2024
FCTC 2030 Countries Meet in Montenegro

Image: Tarik GOK
FCTC 2030 project countries are meeting this week (Sept. 4–6, 2023) in Montenegro to share experiences and challenges and to plan future action on tobacco control.
“We are proud that Montenegro, as the host of this year’s meeting of the FCTC 2030 project, is at the center of global tobacco control this week,” said Montenegro’s health minister, Dragoslav Scekic, at the meeting. “I believe that we will also use this meeting to establish the best practices in this area, all with the aim of protecting the health of the population.”
The FCTC 2030 project is the convention Secretariat’s development assistance initiative that helps to strengthen tobacco control in eligible parties through promoting and supporting governments to accelerate the implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
The project is run by the World Health Organization FCTC Secretariat in partnership with the WHO and the United Nations Development Program.
One of its core elements is the provision of direct support to selected parties that have demonstrated considerable motivation to advance tobacco control as guided by the Global Strategy to Accelerate Tobacco Control: Advancing sustainable development through the implementation of the WHO FCTC 2019–2025.
The FCTC 2030 is funded by the United Kingdom, Norway and Australia.
September 7, 2023
The Contortionists

Photo: Kolozov | Dreamstime.com
Committing to the FCTC objectives while manufacturing cigarettes requires extraordinary moral acrobatics.
By Stefanie Rossel
Since entering into force in 2005, the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has suffered from an inherent, difficult-to-reconcile conflict: While the treaty requires signatories “to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure,” 17 of its 182 member states own at least 10 percent of a tobacco company.
Eight countries—China, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Vietnam, Thailand and Tunisia—own 100 percent of at least one tobacco company. Together, these states control almost 50 percent of the global tobacco industry by volume. In Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Japan, Laos, Malawi, Moldova and Yemen, governments own between 13 percent and 91 percent of tobacco companies (Cuba’s tobacco industry is around 75 percent state-owned, but the country has declined to sign the FCTC).
Daniel Malan
“It is not unlawful to sign a convention that requires you to oppose something that you also support, but it is unethical,” says Daniel Malan, assistant professor in business ethics at Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin. “Imagine an international convention against drug trafficking that allows some organs of state to be involved in the activities that it tries to prevent.”
During the 2020 Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum, Malan presented a study, “Contradictions and Conflicts,” highlighting the issue. The conflict, he states, is one reason that at 0.25 percentage point per year, the decline of global cigarette consumption since 2000 has been disappointing.
FCTC Article 5.3, Malan argues, follows a flawed logic: It requires parties to protect their policies against the commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry. If a party has a vested interest in the form of a state-owned tobacco company (SOTC), it is obliged to follow Article 7.2 and ensure that any investment in the tobacco industry does not prevent it from fully implementing the FCTC. To achieve this, however, such a party must protect its policies against the commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry—which is where the circular argument comes to its close: The government cannot have an investment in tobacco.
Since its inception, Article 5.3 has become a public health dogma, considered so important that it has been enriched with implementation guidelines, handbooks and “toolkits” as well as a knowledge hub in Thailand. But even in their most recent version, published in September 2018, the recommendations for governments with SOTCs remain vague. The WHO also fails to address the issue in its reports on the “global tobacco pandemic.” The 2019 edition, Malan notes, makes more than 20 references to companies such as Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco, each of which holds 14 percent of the world’s cigarette market but never mentions the China National Tobacco Corp. (CNTC), which with a global market share of 44 percent is by far the world’s largest tobacco company.

With a global market share of 44 percent, the China National Tobacco Corp. is the world’s largest tobacco company by a wide margin. (Photo: Taco Tuinstra)
Ethically undesirable, economically viable
Why the FCTC was shaped that way is anybody’s guess, but an international treaty excluding countries representing only half of the globe’s smoking population would have looked feeble. “Perhaps that conflict wasn’t a priority in the bigger picture,” speculates Malan. “Or they wouldn’t want to alienate governments and exclude China as the biggest one. It’s a Catch-22 situation.”
There is evidence that the WHO is aware of that contradiction; in 2015, the director of the WHO’s regional offices in the Philippines in Tobacco Control commented on a study of the subject published by Scott L. Hogg and others from the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine of the University of Edinburgh. However, the WHO declined an interview request by Tobacco Reporter.
Arguing that from an ethical viewpoint it is undesirable for governments to be invested in tobacco, Malan looks at the business case, i.e., whether it makes commercial sense for governments to own tobacco companies. Most of the 17 tobacco-invested FCTC members can be classified as middle income. Japan, of course, is high income and Malawi is low income.
Due to the sheer size of its tobacco industry, China is an outlier in the group. According to 2019 WHO data, the country generates $200.4 billion from tobacco tax. Malan believes that actual figure is around 30 percent higher because the WHO estimate excludes excise duties, value-added taxes and import duties, among other taxes. China is followed by Japan ($17.78 billion), India ($2.87 billion), Bangladesh ($2.65 billion), Egypt ($2.36 billion), Algeria ($2.11 billion) and Thailand ($2.1 billion).
In Bangladesh (0.97 percent), Egypt (0.94 percent), Algeria (1.22 percent), Tunisia (1.08 percent) and Moldova (0.93 percent), tobacco tax accounts for at least 1 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), according to WHO data from 2019. With 1.47 percent of its GDP, China again leads the group.
Malan also investigates how the 17 countries with tobacco monopolies have implemented FCTC rules. FCTC signatories are required to report biannually to the WHO on their progress. In the most recent round of country submissions, Algeria, China, Japan and Moldova failed to provide updates on the headway they made implementing Article 5.3.

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Different paths
So how could the conflict in the FCTC be resolved? A rewording of Article 5.3 is unlikely because changes to the FCTC require agreement from all parties, including those with state-owned tobacco companies. Whether the subject will be brought up during the next FCTC Conference of the Parties (COP9) in November 2021 remains to be seen.
For his 2015 research, Hogg investigated whether tobacco industry ownership represents a conflict of interest or an opportunity for tobacco control. Hogg offers three perspectives on the conflict of interests. In an “intrinsic or fundamental conflict,” governments relying on the income from tobacco companies will be less inclined to implement tobacco control policy. While in such cases privatization of SOTCs may appear as the most appropriate policy response, past SOTC privatizations, Hogg argues, have resulted in these companies being more successful businesses, thus doing a disservice to tobacco control efforts.
The “institutionally mediated conflict” relates to the tension created by the dual responsibility of managing a state-owned company and implementing tobacco control policies at the same time. China, where the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) is responsible for industry-related aspects as well as coordinating the implementation of the FCTC, is an example of such a conflict. The dispute could be potentially mediated by institutional arrangements, such as a firewall between different government institutions, an approach for which Thailand is often praised as a best-practice example (the country is nevertheless expected to fail the WHO’s voluntary target of a 30 percent relative reduction in smoking by 2025).
A third, less prominent perspective, which Hogg calls “interest alignment,” suggests that governments owning tobacco companies radically alter their approach, allowing public health interest to override the commercial interest to advance tobacco control.
In his report, Malan highlights another potential pathway for change, a pragmatic option that he calls “shift gear.” It entails an acknowledgement of the existing conflicts of interest and a commitment to manage them. This would allow governments to make decisions without considering short-term financial performance as publicly traded companies must do. They could potentially transform the tobacco industry by being more innovative, Malan says, for example by focusing on tobacco harm reduction (THR). At the time the FCTC was created, THR was an underdeveloped area extending only to nicotine-replacement therapy and snus, but 15 years on, there are a large variety of electronic nicotine-delivery systems (ENDS) and other reduced-risk products, such as new oral nicotine, available.
Eleven of the 17 FCTC signatories with SOTCs permit sales of e-cigarettes containing nicotine. Japan allows only sales of nicotine-free e-cigarettes. Five of these countries ban e-cigarettes; China prohibits online sales. Given the WHO’s anti-THR attitude, it’s surprising that there aren’t more bans. “For the WHO, it is difficult to acknowledge that something less harmful that could have a positive impact could come out of the tobacco industry,” says Malan. Massive funding from “philanthrocapitalists,” such as Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates, sustain the WHO’s anti-THR stance (see “Uphill Struggle,” Tobacco Reporter, December 2020).

Tobacco continues to play a prominent role in Chinese social interactions. (Photo: Tobacco Reporter acrhive)
The case of China
Due to its sheer size, China represents the greatest opportunity to resolving the conflict of interest—and the greatest challenge. According to the most recent available WHO data—from 2014—the negative effects of tobacco consumption cost the country $57 billion. They are dwarfed, however, by the value of China’s tobacco industry, which is estimated at at least $14 trillion.
“In my view, it’s unlikely to see the Chinese government to change its stance towards tobacco control to a significant degree in the near future, although they have implemented some tobacco control policies,” says Amei Zhang, China analyst at TMA. “The major reason is that the Chinese tobacco sector has maintained its monopoly system for making huge fiscal contributions that the central government has highly depended on over the past decades.”
Besides, tobacco continues to play a prominent role in Chinese social interactions. Zhang cites a 2006 study comparing smoking behavior across 22 countries. Uniquely among the surveyed cultures, 40 percent of Chinese smokers reported carrying two packs of cigarettes with them—one for themselves and the other for social uses. “As you can imagine, cigarettes for socialized purpose are more expensive,” says Zhang.
Zhang doesn’t see any signs that Thailand, where two separate authorities oversee tobacco control and tobacco manufacture, could become a role model for China. “The STMA and the CNTC are two agencies with one set of people. The tobacco authority may be the only authority in China that has not been separated from the enterprise yet,” she explains.
In 2007, China established the Inter-Ministerial Coordination Leading Group for the Implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The group originally comprised eight government institutions: the Development and Reform Commission; the Ministry of Health; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Ministry of Finance; the General Administration of Customs; the State Administration for Industry and Commerce; the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine; and the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration.
“This arrangement has received fierce criticism from tobacco control people,” says Zhang. “Tobacco control experts suggest that the tobacco industry’s interference with tobacco control must be eliminated and that the tobacco industry should separate the administration from the enterprise; they suggested that the composition of the inter-ministerial coordination leading group for the implementation of the FCTC should be adjusted, and when CNTC and STMA still combine, the STMA should withdraw from the coordination mechanism for the eight ministries and commissions on tobacco control compliance.”
Yet, more than a decade later, the STMA is still on the tobacco control leading group. “This means that those who produce and sell cigarettes will still participate in tobacco control,” says Zhang. She is more optimistic about THR. The Chinese government encourages its affiliated tobacco companies to produce less harmful cigarettes, Chinese herb cigarettes and heat-not-burn products, but at the same time it bans the online sale of vapor products.

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Wanted: an FCTC update
To cut the FCTC’s Gordian knot, Malan acknowledges that there is no one-size-fits-all option. “China is very different from any other country in its state control, centralized planning and looking ahead 30 [years] to 50 years,” he says. “What might be more pragmatic could be a plan that doesn’t fit exactly into the FCTC but fits their plans.”
The shift from combustible cigarettes to reduced-harm products, he argues, will ultimately be determined by consumer preferences. “First and foremost, consumers need accurate and reliable information to be able to make informed decisions,” says Malan. “This seems more likely in advanced democracies like Japan. However, the impact of long-term centralized planning could also be positive in terms of tobacco control, provided that responsible decisions are made. Behavior change will always depend on both carrots and sticks, and it is difficult to make general recommendations when the contexts are radically different.”
To move forward, he suggests that a neutral body establish a platform acceptable to public health advocates to invite potentially objective organizations willing to discuss. The aim should be to create a group of interested stakeholders who could then put together a paper ahead of COP9 to put forward amendments to the FCTC. “If it’s a solid proposal from independent agents, it will be hard to ignore. I believe that there should be an effort to amend the FCTC to reflect a new context. If there is sufficient commitment from all stakeholders, this is not unthinkable. But it will require pragmatism from all, and the creation of a negotiating platform acceptable to all, which will not be easy.”
Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.

January 1, 2021
COP9 and MOP2 Postponed to November 2021

The World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) said it would postpone its major conferences for a year.
“In light of the COVID-19 global pandemic and its impact on the conduct of international global conferences and travel, the Bureaus elected by COP8 and MOP1, after consulting the host country, have decided that convening the Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC (COP9) and the Second Session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (MOP2), scheduled for November 2020, is no longer possible,” the organization states on its website.
As a result, the Bureaus, in consultation with the host country and the Secretariat, decided during their Third Joint Meeting on 21 April 2020 to postpone the sessions of COP9 and MOP2 to the following dates:
COP9: 8–13 November 2021; .
MOP2: 15–17 November 2021.
The meetings will convene on those dates in The Hague, Netherlands.
April 28, 2020
WHO snags Kosovo in its tobacco-control net
The World Health organization announced it had snared Kosovo in its ever-growing tobacco-control net. The country has adopted a comprehensive tobacco control law in line with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). The measures include:
- 100 percent smoke-free indoor public places, workplaces, and public transportation, as well as specified outdoor areas, with some minor exceptions;
- comprehensive bans on tobacco advertizing, promotion, and sponsorship, including a ban on retail tobacco product displays;
- graphic health warnings on both sides of the pack;
- ban on misleading packaging, including descriptors such as ‘light’ and ‘low’;
- prohibition on sales to and by minors;
- ban on sales in health, education, and athletic facilities;
- granting power to the Ministry of Health authority to ban ingredients;
- constituents and emissions limits with reporting requirements for manufacturers; and
- cessation and education measures, include 45 minutes each month of mandatory programming on public radio and television.
Additionally, among the range of measures is the strongest protection against tobacco industry interference, based on Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC.
May 9, 2013
Fight against flavor
The tobacco industry braces for the fallout of “Uruguay” and the recommendations about to be issued by the FDA’s tobacco products committee.
By George Gay
In a report to the executive board of the World Health Organization earlier this year, Director General Dr. Margaret Chan said the organization was not performing well enough across all of its activities because it was overextended and needed to trim the scope of its operations.
In fairness, this mea culpa took up only a small part of the report, and Chan talked also of instances where the WHO had enjoyed considerable success.
Nevertheless, Chan went on to say she believed that the level of WHO engagement should not be governed by the size of a health problem, but by the extent to which the WHO could have an impact on the problem. Others, she believed, might be positioned to do a better job.
I would be interested to know whether Chan would include in “others” the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). This body was born of the WHO but is often spoken of as existing independently of its parent. Perhaps it has just grown up and moved on, rather like a student going away to university. In fact, this is possibly a good analogy. The lifestyle choices of both leave something to be desired, and I don’t mean only that they both tend to live beyond their means, or what should be their means.
This is what British American Tobacco had to say in November in a note posted on its website: “Vague and partial guidelines on tobacco product regulation, including on the use of ingredients, were adopted last week by governments gathered in Uruguay for the World Health Organization’s tobacco control conference—despite the fact they offer little guidance on implementation of these recommendations.
“Delegates at the weeklong event, known as the Conference of the Parties [the FCTC’s fourth conference of the parties, COP4], were asked to consider far-reaching recommendations similar to legislation recently passed in Canada which bans the use of almost all ingredients in cigarettes—despite the fact there is no scientific evidence which supports the theory that cigarettes with ingredients are any more addictive or attractive than cigarettes without ingredients.
“Despite objections from many tobacco growing countries across the world, and a highly-charged debate culminating in a ten hour committee meeting, it was decided that the unfinished guidelines on this complex subject be accepted—regardless of the lack of clarification on key aspects and the absence of sound scientific evidence to support them.”
The Canadian model
Of course, since these comments came from a major international tobacco manufacturer, many people will dismiss them as just the automatic gainsaying of anything put out by the FCTC. But this would be wrong because BAT has been making strenuous efforts to reach out and publicly debate difficult issues, something that was reflected in a comment attributed within the website note to Michael Prideaux, director of corporate affairs, who said, in part: “However, we are encouraged by the newly included text in the partial guidelines that governments ‘should consider scientific evidence, other evidence and experience of other countries when determining new measures on ingredients of tobacco products’ and we urge governments to do just that.”
This is essential in fact if chaos is to be avoided. Canadian manufacturers, which serve largely a Virginia cigarette market, have been able to cope with the ban on most additives. But shortly after the COP4 meeting at Punta del Este, Uruguay, on Nov. 15-20, in a move that had been foreshadowed before that meeting, Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) launched a public consultation on whether the country should ban additives from tobacco products. Submissions are due to be accepted until the end of March.
Despite the lack of evidence against the traditional ingredients added to tobacco products, the agency seems in no doubt about the effect of the use of flavors. “The flavors stimulate initiation of smoking in youth and adolescents and mask the unpleasant taste and odor of cigarettes,” said Anvisa’s manager of tobacco products, Humberto Martinez.
One thing that should be pointed out here is that though the second part of Martinez’s statement seems at first reading to be in line with what some in the tobacco industry might say, it is subtly different and, in my view, wrong. What Martinez is saying is the equivalent of claiming that sugar is used to mask the unpleasant taste of chocolate. In fact, I suppose, sugar is added to cocoa to mask the bitter taste of cocoa, so that it can be made into chocolate. And in the same way, flavors are added to tobacco to mask some of its unpleasant characteristics, so that it can be turned into cigarettes.
Mane’s Dr. Roger Penn put this more elegantly when he told me that what had to be remembered was that there were only two classical uses for tobacco flavors. One was to help level out the variation in the tobacco base and make a consistent product given variations in tobacco crops. The other was to put a “signature” on a product to create product differentiation on the market.
Anvisa, meanwhile, evokes the bans imposed in both Canada and the U.S., but it seems to be leaning toward a more extreme Canadian model. Additives are considered to be any substance or compound other than tobacco or water used in processing, manufacturing and packaging of a tobacco product.
Also, Anvisa is not confining itself to cigarettes. The ban would apply to products that use tobacco and that are smoked, inhaled or chewed.
One of the problems here is that Brazil’s market, unlike Canada’s, comprises modified blended products, and it seems highly unlikely that Brazilian manufacturers could produce such cigarettes without the use of some additives.
As Penn put it: “The unfortunate thing about Anvisa in Brazil is that they are advocating a ban, as per Canada, presumably because Brazil has been following Health Canada very closely for quite a few years.
“If it is a Virginia market, it is easier to sustain without flavorings because they are not used in the majority of products. But if you ban flavors in Brazil, for instance, or Germany, or France, or Switzerland, where there are modified blended products, you will wind up with harsh, irritating products that produce hot temperatures when smoked. People won’t buy them. So you kill that product, but, guess what, you get contraband shipped in from various parts of the world.”
At this point I asked Penn whether or not he had heard of any other countries planning to ban or regulate additives in tobacco products, and he said he had not. However, he is concerned that, depending on what happens in Brazil, there could be a domino effect.
Eduardo Berea, of Mother Murphy’s, also believes that Brazil could prove pivotal, at least among the countries of Latin America. Brazil was the first country to add delivery numbers to its packs, he said, and now you could find such information throughout Latin America.
Berea made the point that it would not be possible to make a reasonable product in Brazil without using casings, since local burleys had low levels of sugars that needed to be compensated for with the addition of casings.
He said it might be possible in Brazil to make a cigarette without top flavors, but a manufacturer would not be able to create a distinctive pack aroma, and it would be much more difficult to create distinctive products because there would need to be a different blend for every brand.
A note of explanation is needed here. We all tend to use the word flavor as shorthand, when what we are often talking about are casings, flavors or top flavors, or any combination of these. Casings, Berea explained, were used both in Virginia- and American-blend products, but the functionality was different. With Virginia (flue-cured) blends, the purpose of a casing was mainly to add humectants such as propylene glycol or glycerin—both of which are permitted even in Canada—with the objective of improving the humectation of the flue-cured tobacco, since sugar tended to bind to water and since, otherwise, flue-cured was not able to absorb too much liquid.
In the case of American-blend products and especially on the burley component, a casing was added that commonly comprised juice concentrates, chocolate, cocoa powder or cocoa extract, licorice and humectants. In this case the main objectives were to correct the sugar/nicotine ratio of the tobacco to make it a smokeable product, and to round—with the cocoa components and the licorice—the flavor.
Top flavors were used mainly to create a distinctive brand identity not only in the smoke but in the pack aroma as well.
Following the science?
Meanwhile, at an international level, Penn is hoping that the scientific argument wins out and that manufacturers continue to be allowed to use traditional tobacco additives. But, if not, he hopes that flavors are not banned but their application levels regulated.
And as reported by BAT, the tobacco industry’s position received something of a scientific lift when the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks recently acknowledged the lack of scientific evidence to support the idea that—“bearing in mind the broad meaning of ‘attractiveness’—a specific additive affected the attractiveness of tobacco products intended for smoking.”
Berea is greatly concerned about the science surrounding the tobacco flavors issue, or rather, he’s concerned with the lack of science. He sees the arguments put out by bodies such as the WHO’s FCTC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products as being “infected” with the “quit or die” mentality.
Nevertheless, science is seen by some as the way forward and, in the middle of February, a senior executive of Lorillard—about 85 percent of whose sales are of menthol cigarettes—urged an FDA advisory panel not to lose sight of the congressional and FDA mandate to “follow the science” in developing its report and nonbinding recommendation regarding the use of menthol in cigarettes.
This sounds all well and good, but to my mind the idea that decisions on menthol can be made on the basis of science is wishful thinking. Congress’ exemption of menthol from its ban on characterizing flavors must have been based on economics and politics. And now, the rationale for that original decision is meeting science in a confluence that can result only in political expediency. This need not be a bad thing as far as the tobacco industry is concerned, however. Politics and economics exempted menthol in the first place, and it seems likely that they can come together with science to keep that exemption in place.
Currently, the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) is developing a report and recommendations on the impact on public health of the use of menthol in cigarettes that is due by March 23. And there are a number of aspects of this process that are encouraging. For instance, the FDA has asked tobacco industry representatives who serve on the committee to develop an industry perspective document on the public health impact of menthol cigarettes that will accompany the report.
Also, the TPSAC intends to discuss draft report chapters at open public meetings before they are finalized, and copies of these chapters are to be made available on the TPSAC website.
And there is no required deadline or timeline for the FDA to act on the recommendations provided by the TPSAC in the report.
But there are aspects of what the FDA says that makes me uneasy. For instance, it says that any actions that it might take that lead to restrictions on the sale of menthol products or the establishment of product standards would require formal rule making that would include public notice and comment. It seems to beggar belief that if the science on flavors is uncertain to the point where menthol is not banned, there could be any basis outside of the magic circle for, say, the reduction of levels of menthol in cigarettes.
But moving back to the international scene, there are other reasons to remain hopeful. Chan in her report made the point that many organizations involved in global health issues were facing serious funding shortfalls. I take no comfort in this where such shortfalls will cut meaningful health initiatives. But, clearly, it would seem to be reasonable that, given the current economic problems in many places, anti-tobacco organizations, like other bodies, should suffer cuts in respect of ideas that have no prospect of improving health and that could lead to severe economic losses in some of the countries least well able to withstand them. The additives issue is one such idea, and, as Chan says, the emphasis should be on what the WHO can achieve, not the
size—or, presumably, the perceived size—of the problem.

March 1, 2011
After Uruguay
The FCTC Conference of Parties’ recent meeting has put the spotlight back on tobacco ingredients. But the case for a ban remains flimsy.
By John Luik
With the fourth session of the Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC) in Punta Del Este, Uruguay, at the end of November, cigarette ingredients have again assumed center stage in the tobacco control playbook.
While the session dealt with a variety of issues, the most important was without doubt Article 9 of the FCTC—regulation of the contents of tobacco products. Article 9 states, “The Conference of the Parties, in consultation with competent international bodies, shall propose guidelines for testing and measuring the contents and emissions of tobacco products and for the regulation of these contents and emissions.”
According to the WHO press release of Nov. 20, the conference decided that “flavoring ingredients that increase attractiveness of tobacco products should be regulated in order to reduce the number of new smokers, especially among youth.”
According to the working group on Articles 9 and 10, “Tobacco products are commonly made to be attractive in order to encourage their use. From the perspective of public health, there is no justification for permitting the use of ingredients, such as flavoring agents, which help make tobacco products attractive.” Based on this claim the working group recommended that “Parties should either prohibit or restrict ingredients that may be used to increase palatability, such as sugars and sweeteners, flavoring substances, and spices and herbs …. Parties should prohibit or restrict ingredients that have coloring properties, such as inks and pigments ….”
Nothing new
While ingredients are only now attracting significant attention, the issue is not new. In July 1999, AHS/UK issued the report Tobacco Additives: Cigarette engineering and nicotine addiction, written by Clive Bates and Martin Jarvis of the United Kingdom, and Greg Connolly of the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program, who is now a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Tobacco Scientific Advisory Committee.
In that report, the authors noted that EU regulations permitted “over 600 additives” to be used in the manufacture of tobacco products under a loose and decentralized regulatory framework. “Although tobacco additives are generally screened for their direct toxicity, there is virtually no assessment of the impact additives have on smoking behavior or other undesirable external consequences.”
According to ASH, most additives were not used prior to 1970 and most are “not necessary.” The primary concerns that emerged from the report were that additives 1) posed a potential risk to users; 2) increased the addictiveness of cigarettes through “free nicotine” and 3) increased the attractiveness of cigarettes, particularly for children.
The report argued that in response to the ineffective regulatory regime for additives—it referred to the 1997 U.K. voluntary agreement—a new regulatory framework was needed in which “the manufacturer is obliged to demonstrate that no additional harm arises from tobacco product design decisions such as the use of an additive. This should include the impact of additives on smoking behavior, passive smoking and fire risks.” Included in this new regulatory framework would be the 1) disclosure of all additives, 2) disclosure of the purpose of all additives, 3) disclosure and all research on all additives, and, most significantly, granting regulators the “power to challenge any of the existing 6,000 additives currently allowed and to have them removed until the manufacture is able [to] show that no extra harm to the public arises as a direct or indirect result of the additive.”
The ASH report gained considerable traction as a blueprint for ingredient regulation. For example, a 2001 report prepared for the New Zealand Ministry of Health by Jeff Fowles proposed that New Zealand adopt a “regulatory framework for tobacco additives along the lines proposed by Bates et al.”
According to Fowles, the tobacco industry would need to justify the use of additives that have a pharmacological effect, numb peripheral nerves (menthol for instance) or affect the absorption of nicotine.
In a 2003 article in Tobacco Control, Borland argues that the harmfulness of tobacco products can be reduced in three ways—“by making it less toxic per unit used; by making it less addictive per unit used; and/or making it less palatable.” He asserts that the “regulatory framework needs to progress on all three.” In the mind of the anti-tobacco movement, ingredient regulation would address all three of Borland’s objectives: If one accepts the charges about ingredients, it would make cigarettes less toxic, less addictive and less palatable (read: attractive) to smokers.
By far the biggest push to the ingredients regulatory bandwagon came in 2009 when the Canadian government passed bill C-32, which was so broadly drafted that it would cover all flavorings in cigarettes sold in Canada. The ban effectively banned the sale of American-blend cigarettes in Canada. In the United States, meanwhile, the FDA was given regulatory authority for the ingredients issue. The legislation required the immediate removal of certain flavors along with the mandate to examine and decide on the use of menthol.
Lacking legitimacy
While the ASH and Fowles reports called for ingredients regulation at the national level, the FCTC has been driving regulation on a global scale. Part of the problem is that anti-tobacco activists don’t seem to understand how cigarettes are produced. Unable or unwilling to distinguish between characterizing and noncharacterizing flavors, they have argued to ban both.
However, banning noncharacterizing flavors would do little to advance the cause of public health. The flavors give cigarettes no distinctive taste yet are essential in the production of American-blend cigarettes, which account for the majority of cigarette sales outside of China. Is it a coincidence that the noncharacterizing flavors that would be banned under some proposals are used in the leading tobacco brands?
But amid this regulatory fever, the fundamental question remains as to whether any of these claims are justified. Is there a case for the regulation of tobacco ingredients? The working group on Articles 9 and 10 cites four reasons for regulation: the ad hoc and ineffectual nature of the current regulatory scheme; the toxicity of certain ingredients currently used in cigarettes, the fact that certain ingredients make cigarettes more attractive, particularly to young smokers; and the role of ingredients in promoting and maintaining cigarettes’ addictiveness.
While these are the “stated” problems, the deeper issue is that the ingredient issue offers the anti-tobacco movement a powerful way to control and ultimately change the composition of cigarettes, in effect to make them fundamentally unattractive. And this has the potential to be a more serious threat to the industry than, for instance, plain packaging. But just how legitimate are these claims about ingredients?
First, the claim that the existing regulatory framework is loose, ad hoc and ineffectual is at variance with the facts. In the U.K. for instance, the voluntary agreement requires manufacturers to supply the Department of Health with a list of all ingredients and the reasons for their use. Moreover the current regulatory framework for ingredients is regularly updated. Germany has banned two ingredients in the past nine years, while allowing the use of other ingredients for only limited periods.
Second, the claim that ingredients increase the toxicity of cigarettes is not supported by scientific evidence. Over the past 20 years, industry experts have published some 20 different ingredients toxicology studies. Lemus et al. published a study of the toxicological properties of cigarettes with varying amounts of vanillin in 2007 (Inhalation Toxicology) and Renne et al. published a study of the toxicological effects of flavoring and casing in mainstream smoke. (Inhalation Toxicology, 2006)
British American Tobacco has published a series of scientific studies examining the toxic effects of 482 ingredients. None of these published studies has supported the claim that ingredients represent an additional toxic risk to smokers or nonsmokers. In a recent review of the ingredient most commonly a focus of regulatory concern, menthol, Daniel Heck from Lorillard found “that menthol employed as a cigarette tobacco flavoring ingredient does not meaningfully affect the inherent toxicity of cigarette smoke.” (“A review and assessment of menthol employed as a cigarette flavoring ingredient,” Food and Chemical Toxicology 2010)
Third, there have been no credible scientific studies supporting the claim that certain ingredients make smoking more addictive. Indeed, the scientific and regulatory consensus about addiction is that it is nicotine, not some other ingredient that leads to addiction. Indeed, the ASH study does not cite any published scientific studies confirming that cigarette ingredients in some way “engineer” tobacco addiction.
Furthermore, the recently completed report on the Addictiveness and Attractiveness of Tobacco Additives by the EU’s Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) published on Nov. 12, 2010, found no evidence that current tobacco ingredients have rewarding or reinforcing properties or are in themselves addictive. As the report notes, “In the peer-reviewed scientific articles assessed, there is no documentation for certain individual additives to cause addiction directly.” (p. 41)
Fourth, the claim that certain ingredients make smoking more attractive, particularly to children, is questionable on at least four grounds. First, the entire concept of attractiveness, as used in the ingredients debate, is both vague and unscientific, something that the SCENIHR report itself acknowledges when it notes that it is “necessary to perform experimental studies to assess the attractiveness of tobacco additives objectively.” But there are currently neither scientific criteria of what constitutes attractiveness nor studies demonstrating that certain ingredients promote or enhance attractiveness. Indeed there are no animal models that would allow for the assessment of attractiveness. As SCENIHR notes, “It remains difficult to distinguish the direct effects of these additives from the indirect effects such as the marketing towards specific groups.” The risk is thus that a subjective notion without scientific foundation—attractiveness—is being used as a convenient way to ban certain ingredients.
Second, there are no scientific studies linking smoking initiation with certain cigarette ingredients. Indeed, there are no studies showing that removing certain ingredients will make cigarettes less attractive to young people and reduce youth smoking. There are thousands of studies of youth smoking, yet none of these studies suggest that young people begin smoking because of the effect of certain cigarettes ingredients in making smoking attractive.
Third, there are no scientific studies establishing that smokers find it more difficult to quit or fail to quit because of certain cigarette ingredients.
Fourth, current prevalence levels and smoking patterns refute the “ingredients make smoking more attractive” argument. For example, if ingredients make smoking more attractive, one would expect to find higher prevalence rates in countries with cigarettes containing more flavor ingredients. Yet this is not the case. In France, Italy, Denmark and Switzerland, the tobacco market is dominated by cigarettes with high levels of ingredients, yet these countries have lower rates of smoking prevalence than the United Kingdom, where smokers prefer cigarettes with fewer flavorings. The world’s largest tobacco market, China, is dominated by Virginia cigarettes, which depend less on ingredients than do American-blend cigarettes.
The Winston problem
Finally, there is the “Winston problem” pointed out by Michael Siegel (The Rest of the Story, July 27, 2010). Winston cigarettes are “100 percent tobacco with no additives.” To heath activists, this should make them more acceptable than other cigarettes. However, anti-tobacco campaigners went “beserk” over Reynolds’ advertising campaign, complaining to the Federal Trade Commission, which forced Winston to carry a disclaimer noting, “No additives does not mean a safer cigarette.”
But according to the claims of the activists about additives and toxicity, this is precisely what removing additives should accomplish. More crucially, no additives should mean a cigarette that is substantially less appealing to smokers, particularly young people, according to this logic.
As Siegel notes, “Here then, is the fascinating conundrum for the WHO and the FCTC working groups. If they argue that there is a public health justification for banning all cigarette additives, then they must acknowledge that Winston cigarettes are a significant public health advancement …. On the other hand, if they refuse to acknowledge that Reynolds’ Winston cigarettes are a public health advancement, then they are admitting that there is no public health justification for their proposed regulations that would ban all cigarette additives.”
While ingredient regulations have little scientific support, one can nevertheless foresee their potential effect in terms of the tobacco marketplace and product innovation. In the marketplace, ingredient regulation could easily lead to the growth in the illicit trade since there will be a substantial demand for and profit to be made in supplying smokers with traditional products.
The assumption behind radical changes in tobacco ingredients is that smokers will simply accept them because they have no other choice. But this is folly. There is an enormous illicit tobacco market that has the ability and the incentive to provide smokers with precisely the sort of cigarettes they want- irrespective of any FCTC regulation. What the anti-tobacco activists fail to understand is that they cannot change the preferences of smokers by regulatory fiat.
In terms of product innovation, particularly the development of reduced exposure/risk products, the inability to use ingredients, particularly sugars, will make it more difficult for these products to achieve mass market appeal. This is because flavorings are necessary to compensate for the lower tar levels that these products will likely have. Reduced exposure products with greater harshness and an unattractive taste will hardly fulfill the public health objective of harm reduction.
Of course, this may well be the real objective of the anti-tobacco movement. The goal might be to make both conventional cigarettes and reduced exposure products so unattractive that fewer smokers will choose to smoke them. In this sense the arguments about toxicity and addictiveness are simply red herrings designed to divert attention from the larger project of engineering unpalatable cigarettes through substantially changing ingredients. An expansive reading of Article 9 of the FCTC might sanction this.
The trouble with this is that it amounts to prohibition by another name. But prohibiting tobacco, either directly or by stealth, is neither possible nor desirable, as even the most dedicated anti-tobacco regulator must recognize. Unfortunately the absence of science, hidden agendas and disregard for unintended consequences on display at Punta Del Este strongly suggest that they don’t.

February 1, 2011