The World Health Organization is under fire again, this time by an ex-director who has slammed the policy of being nicotine-free rather than smoke-free and not seeking safer alternatives to tobacco.
At a recent e-cigarette summit, the World Health Organization took a big hit to its reputation after a keynote speech by Professor Robert Beaglehole. Not only is Professor Beaglehole the emeritus professor of public health at the University of Auckland, but he was also formerly the director of the Department of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion at the World Health Organization.
His WHO past makes his criticism of their policies even more pointed. His argument was that saving millions of smokers’ lives depended on making safer alternatives available, including vaporizers, not trying to eliminate nicotine altogether.
During his keynote address, Beaglehole criticized the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) treaty. He highlighted that it had failed to achieve any success because it was incorrectly focused on nicotine abstinence and had failed to embrace less harmful products. Another area he criticized was the WHO’s obsession with youth vaping which it had focused on so strongly that it had failed to make safer smoking alternatives available to adults.
Professor Beaglehole recommended that there should be an independent inquiry into the WHO’s leadership as a matter of urgency. He said that the WHO had ‘lost its way’ and condemned the secrecy of its FCTC Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings.
One of the issues he raised was the WHOs reliance on funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, which he believes is forcing the WHO in the wrong direction because of Michael Bloomberg’s ideology. It’s believed that donations from Bloomberg Philanthropies have exceeded over $1 billion to date.
He also noted that Bloomberg’s donations accompanied the WHOs adherence to MPOWER, which completely excludes any tobacco harm reduction options. Beaglehole noted that wherever MPOWER has been implemented, smoking rates have either declined at an extremely slow rate or actually risen.
In summary, Beaglehole noted that the World Health Organization currently presides over 8 million smoking-related deaths per year and isn’t doing nearly enough to reduce the number. Many countries worldwide have embraced smoking alternatives such as vaping, but there is still quite a significant number that have banned vaping products altogether.
At the end of his speech, Professor Beaglehole asked a question for those working within the WHO and elsewhere that consistently deny the benefits of tobacco harm reduction.
“What if you are wrong?” he asked. “If you are wrong, the cost will be huge and will be measured in millions of preventable deaths. This seems to me a totally unnecessary and unacceptable risk to take, and I would ask you to consider the possibility that you are wrong.”
How long can the WHO continue to ignore one of the three pillars of its own FCTC treaty? Surely, safer alternatives to smoking are worth investing in for the sake of millions and millions of people worldwide.
