• Experts say they are exasperated by the WHO’s dogmatic hostility towards new technology and fear the U.N. health agency will squander the opportunity to avoid millions of premature deaths that will be caused by smoking.
• Encouraging people to switch to low-risk alternatives to smoking could make a large difference to the burden of disease by 2030 if WHO got behind the idea instead of blocking it.
Image: COURTESY
For World No Tobacco Day 2020, an international group of independent experts with no conflicting links to the tobacco or vaping industry has sharply criticized the World Health Organization.
They say that the world health body has a backwards-looking approach to innovation and new technology, such as vaping products.
Experts say they are exasperated by the WHO’s dogmatic hostility towards new technology and fear the U.N. health agency will squander the opportunity to avoid millions of premature deaths that will be caused by smoking.
Professor David Abrams of the School of Global Public Health, New York University said that it is known that vaping and other smoke-free nicotine products are very much less risky than smoking.
He added that it is also not clear that those who switch completely see rapid improvements in their health.
"Yet the WHO continues to promote the outright prohibition or extreme regulation of these products. How can it make sense to ban the much safer product when cigarettes are available everywhere?” Abrams said.
The group expressed concern that WHO would miss key international objectives for reducing cancer, heart and lung disease.
The Sustainable Development Goals require a one-third reduction in death rates from non-communicable diseases by 2030.
Professor Robert Beaglehole of the University of Auckland said that unless it does something different and embraces innovation in tobacco policy, WHO will miss the targets for reducing cancer, heart and lung disease by some distance.
"Encouraging people to switch to low-risk alternatives to smoking could make a large difference to the burden of disease by 2030 if WHO got behind the idea instead of blocking it,” the former Director of WHO’s Department of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion said.
The longest-serving state attorney general in U.S. history, Tom Miller, who played a leading role in bringing the tobacco industry to account in the groundbreaking lawsuit, claimed WHO has lost its sense of mission and purpose.
“It’s as if the WHO has forgotten what it is there to do – to save lives and reduce disease. We can do that by helping and encouraging consumers to switch from cigarettes to lower-risk products. This means being honest about the much lower risks and by using smarter regulation to make switching more attractive," Miller said.
The group said that WHO is losing its way on smoking.
“When WHO set out to build an international treaty for tobacco control from 2000, the goal was clear – it was trying to tackle the worldwide epidemic of smoking-related disease," said Tikki Pangestu, visiting professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
The Former director, Research Policy & Cooperation at the World Health Organization added that somewhere along the way, WHO has developed a closed mentality that is leading it to take unworkable, non-negotiable or counterproductive positions that are not backed by sound science.
"It seems to have neglected its core mission, ‘the highest possible level of health for all people’, including the 1 billion smokers globally, most of whom want to avoid disease and premature death," Pangestu said.
Professor John Britton, CBE, professor of epidemiology at the University of Nottingham called on WHO to refocus its efforts on the major objectives of cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory disease.
“On World No Tobacco Day, the WHO should be driven by one overriding question: How do we get smoking down for the greatest number at the greatest rate? We know WHO embraces harm reduction in other areas of public health, including for illicit drugs and sexual health," Britton said.
Drawing attention to the situation in India, Professor Rajesh Sharan, of North-Eastern Hill University, said that the Asian country carries a mammoth health burden of cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory disease arising from the use of tobacco in many different forms.
He noted that the most adversely affected are the marginalized and disadvantaged population groups, including women.
"In my view, the decline in tobacco use has been worryingly slow despite WHO-FCTC being implemented in India. On the World No Tobacco Day 2020, I wish that the decline of tobacco use in all its forms and manifestations was more robust," Sharan said
The group was concerned that WHO was becoming obsessed with the tobacco industry, just at the time when the industry was facing a highly beneficial disruption by new technology.
According to David Sweanor, Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics, University of Ottawa, Canada, WHO is treating vaping products as though they are part of a ploy by Big Tobacco.
"But they have this 100 per cent wrong. In fact, the new products are disrupting the profitable cigarette trade of the tobacco industry and driving down cigarette sales," Sweanor said.
He added; "It is exactly what we need from innovation, but WHO and its private funders have lined up to oppose it, with calls for prohibition."
Sweanor noted that though it does not seem to realize it, WHO is siding with the cigarette interests of Big Tobacco, erecting barriers to entry to new technology and protecting the incumbent cigarette oligopoly.
The group is exasperated with WHO’s World No Tobacco Day themes.
UK-based Clive Bates, of Counterfactual Consulting and former Director Action on Smoking and Health (UK) said:
“When smoking is by far the dominant cause of disease caused by tobacco, why would the WHO use World No Tobacco Day to target one of the most effective and popular alternatives to smoking? We rarely see the vaping industry advertise to adolescents and we never see kids used in commercial vaping ads – but on World No Tobacco Day we have the absurd spectacle of WHO promoting adverts with children vaping. What on Earth do they think they are doing?”