The World Health Organization’s 11th Conference of the Parties (COP11) to its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) ended on November 22, having demonstrated how tobacco harm reduction remains a global battleground.
The six-day gathering in Geneva, Switzerland, was ostensibly aimed at advancing global measures to reduce health, environmental and economic harms of tobacco use. Instead, it was used to target tobacco harm reduction (THR) and smear it as an industry ruse, rather than a life-saving strategy—even if pushback from a number of nations blocked the adoption of yet more damaging anti-THR policies.
Although harm reduction is formally included as a tobacco control strategy in the preamble of the international FCTC treaty, countries that have deployed THR to achieve unprecedented reductions in smoking were met with cynicism at COP11.
In a little over a decade, New Zealand, which supports people switching from cigarettes to vapes and other safer options, has reduced its smoking rate from 16.4 percent to 6.8 per cent and virtually ended youth smoking. During COP11, the country was recognized for these efforts with the “Dirty Ashtray” award from the Global Alliance on Tobacco Control (GATC), a network of NGOs working to support the FCTC. The award is meant to shame governments deemed detrimental to public health. GATC blamed New Zealand for policies “being used by tobacco industry interests” and claimed it has “alarming vaping rates.”
Awarding the “Dirty Ashtray” to New Zealand “defies logic and undermines the purpose of the treaty.”
That alarm will not be shared by the many New Zealanders who have been able to switch from deadly cigarettes. At COP11, the New Zealand delegation explicitly attributed accelerated smoking decline since 2019 to its “implementation of tobacco harm reduction measures.”
“Awarding the ‘Dirty Ashtray’ to NZ shows how far the [FCTC] Secretariat has allowed the process to drift,” Nancy Loucas, executive coordinator of the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA), told Filter. “It defies logic and undermines the purpose of the treaty.”
Meanwhile, GATC gave its laudatory “Orchid Award” to Mexico, which, with a current smoking rate of 14.7 per cent and an annual death toll estimated as high as 63,000, has banned vapes. The country was applauded “for delivering one of the most powerful and uncompromising statements against the tobacco industry at COP11,” with an implied smear of evidence-based THR.
COP11’s hostility to THR is baked in, when the conference has a closed-doors policy to THR advocates, nicotine consumer groups and media, shutting down dissent and hampering reporting on what goes on there. Those NGOs that were present were hand-picked by the WHO to align with its anti-THR stance. Many of them are funded, like the WHO itself, by the anti-THR billionaire Michael Bloomberg—who is the WHO global ambassador for noncommunicable diseases and injuries. In a letter to COP11 delegates, the GATC—funded by Bloomberg—claimed that “the evidence on the use of e-cigarettes as cessation aid is inconclusive.”
“A macabre spectacle of arrogance and ineptitude, displaying utter indifference to human pain and suffering.”
During the conference, European Commission Director-General for Health and Food Safety Sandra Gallina was among the many others who ignored evidence by undermining the smoking-cessation role of safer nicotine products, and focusing on their supposed public health risks to call for more restrictions and bans.
The whole thing amounted to a “macabre spectacle of arrogance and ineptitude, displaying utter indifference to human pain and suffering,” British THR expert Clive Bates told Filter.
The world continues to suffer an unconscionable 8 million annual smoking- and tobacco-related deaths. These preventable deaths are heavily concentrated in lower-income countries, many of which ban THR products—even as countries like New Zealand, Sweden and Japan show that access can achieve vastly more than traditional tobacco control measures alone.
The United Kingdom has also enjoyed a reputation as a leading THR proponent—albeit that reputation has been damaged in recent years—and has reduced its smoking rate to 11.9 percent, with vaping now more common there than smoking. In the run-up to COP11, British officials vowed to make a stand for vapes and THR.
“They did nothing of the sort,” Martin Cullip, a British THR advocate, told Filter. The UK statement, according to Cullip, acknowledged the devastating global consequences of smoking while touting its new policies that will weaken the ability of THR products to outcompete cigarettes. The UK delegation apparently failed to mention how vapes have helped cut smoking rates.
“Obviously, we don’t know what was said behind closed doors,” Cullip noted. “But from outward appearances, it seems that licking the boots of the WHO, and boasting about the UK being the first to implement a generational [incremental smoking ban], was all they went to Geneva for.”
“We can’t turn our back on a potential solution,” declared Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Though the UK might have broken its promise, some countries were principled enough to call out the FCTC for abandoning its own purpose by stopping rigorous and open discussion on how to reduce smoking harms.
North Macedonia called for more transparency and clarity on the concept of harm reduction. Mozambique called for evidence-based regulation. Albania and Gambia also made a stand, demanding science and evidence be at the core of regulatory policies. Saint Kitts and Nevis—just as it did at COP10, in 2024—recognized the importance of harm reduction in public health, reportedly declaring, “We can’t turn our back on a potential solution.”
The specific COP11 agenda items with the biggest potential impact on THR access were 4.4 (“Regulation of contents and disclosure of tobacco products,” concerning Articles 9 and 10 of the FCTC), and 4.5, which the FCTC described as follows:
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.”
But both items were ultimately left on the table due to a lack of consensus, and are now set to be discussed at COP12 in 2027.
Cullip—who is an international fellow with the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, which organized a simultaneous counter-event in Geneva called “Good COP”—said that deferring the items was “the best we could expect.”
There had been moves afoot to conflate safer alternatives with cigarettes, to include vapor under the official definition of “smoke,” and to urge more bans and restrictions of THR options.
“Item 4.5, on harm reduction, was WHO’s lame attempt to shake-off the accusation that they are ignoring harm reduction despite it being described as a core pilar of tobacco control on in Article 1(d) of the FCTC treaty preamble,” Cullip commented. “The Secretariat tried to portray the idea as an industry narrative, rather than a valid public health approach which is understood, and employed, in numerous different areas of governmental policy.”
Regarding item 4.4, Cullip said the FCTC Secretariat “had cut out Parties from the conversation, attempting instead to pass research and decision-making to NGOs and bypassing national governments.” This, he said, raised concerns, and it will be discussed at the next conference.
In terms of substantive policy developments—thanks to those delegations that refused to toe the WHO line—COP11 was mostly a case of no news is good news for THR advocates.
Amid that stalemate, delegates were able to agree to increase state funding for tobacco control programs. They also agreed to “consider” generational bans on people born after a certain date purchasing tobacco, like the UK plan; and potential stronger action on “criminal and civil liability related to tobacco control.”
But in terms of substantive policy developments—thanks to those national delegations that refused to toe the WHO line—COP11 was mostly a case of no news is good news for THR advocates. Threats will be renewed in 2027.
“In some ways, the COP was a success—but only if measured by the scale of damage it could have done if the WHO and the activists in the Secretariat had got what they were pushing for,” Bates told Filter. “But defining failure as an achievement because it could have been worse is hardly inspiring.”
“Most of what was agreed was various flavors of fudge that will not move the dial on smoking, disease and death,” he continued. “On tobacco harm reduction, the delegates fought themselves to a standstill, with crude prohibitionists held back by pragmatic supporters of market transition to low-risk alternatives to cigarettes.”
“It was an ugly spectacle of prohibitionist countries demanding bans,” Bates concluded, “despite well-documented consequences for illicit trade, and the obvious ethical problem of banning the safer nicotine products and leaving millions of people who smoke with cigarettes as the only legal nicotine products.”
Screenshot of COP11 logo via WHO FCTC Secretariat/YouTube
The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, received a one-off donation from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance to support travel to a harm reduction event in 2024. Filter‘s Editorial Independence Policy applies.