In an opinion piece published today (November 19) by The Kingston Whig Standard in Canada titled The WHO Wants Nine Times More Money to Control Tobacco. Don’t Pay!, economics professor Ian Irvine criticizes the World Health Organization’s COP11 for pursuing what he calls “nicotine authoritarianism” and seeking an 800% budget increase to eliminate nicotine use.
“The WHO’s tobacco budget is just over $1 billion, much of it provided by a normally wonderful philanthropist, Michael Bloomberg,” Irvine writes. “But the WHO has been advertising it really needs $9 billion to do its job properly: eliminate nicotine use.
“The WHO does not need this money. Regarding nicotine, it is a reactionary organization. It refuses to recognize the benefits of ‘new generation products’: e-cigarettes, oral pouches, and heated tobacco products.”
The piece contends that WHO and many advocacy groups wrongly demonize NGPs, treating them as dangerous as cigarettes, while smoking rates are already plummeting in developed countries. Irvine urges harm-reduction strategies instead of prohibition,
Irvine, who has had research funded by Global Action to End Smoking, concludes that empowering adults to choose reduced-risk products would accelerate declines in smoking, save lives, and expose the WHO’s restrictive approach as more about sustaining bureaucracy than advancing public health.
“The challenge for scientists is twofold: speaking up for harm reduction at COP11, even at the risk of verbal bludgeoning by the sinecured interest groups,” Irvine wrote, “and continuing the struggle domestically against a dominant culture policed by self-appointed moral guardians whose harassment of all forms of nicotine serves primarily to delay more smokers’ transition to low-toxicity products.
“As smoking declines dramatically … we could start distributing pink slips at the WHO.”