The World Health Organization’s global tobacco control conference, COP11, concluded last week in Geneva, bringing together member states to discuss the future of nicotine regulation. The conference was initially intended to strengthen the global fight against smoking, but what ultimately unfolded revealed growing cracks in the WHO’s prohibitionist agenda and clear signs of rising resistance worldwide to what many governments now see as institutional overreach.

Throughout the conference, the WHO and its network of aligned NGOs pushed aggressively to impose środki such as bans on vape flavors, strict nicotine limits, and sweeping restrictions on newer products like nicotine pouches. Despite a growing body of evidence showing that these alternatives help smokers quit and substantially reduce health risks, the WHO’s approach was widely perceived as ideological, privileging rigid bans over emerging scientific consensus. The Królewskie Kolegium Lekarzy has confirmed that vaping is considerably less harmful than smoking, and Cochrane Reviews have found that it can be an effective smoking cessation tool.

Resistance to the hardline approach advocated by COP11 leadership intensified as the week progressed. A number of countries, increasingly frustrated with top-down mandates, declined to endorse binding restrictions. Instead, several delegations pushed for more flexible, science-based frameworks that respect national circumstances and consumer choice. New Zealand emerged as the clearest example of this contrast. The country has pursued an aggressive harm reduction strategy by encouraging smokers to switch to vaping and has achieved one of the fastest smoking-rate declines globally. Yet rather than being held up as a model, New Zealand was publicly singled out during the conference and given the so-called “dirty ashtray” label, a move that revealed the ongoing institutional hostility toward harm reduction within the WHO’s bureaucratic culture.

As divisions deepened, maintaining the appearance of consensus became increasingly difficult. In response, the WHO faced pressure from a growing bloc of member states to soften its original proposals. Mandatory measures were quietly replaced with voluntary, non-binding guidelines, an adjustment designed to prevent open fracture and preserve the conference’s fragile diplomatic balance.

It is also worth noting that the United States is not a party to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and has formally ended its membership in the WHO. While the U.S. played no direct role in COP11’s deliberations, its absence was nonetheless felt in the broader skepticism surrounding the organization’s credibility and willingness to respect cultural, political, and national differences among its remaining members.

Several countries, including Albania, North Macedonia, Serbia, New Zealand, The Gambia, Mozambique, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, openly voiced support for tobacco harm reduction and evidence-based regulatory approaches. At the same time, a number of influential states remained committed to traditional restrictive models, notably Brazil, India, and Denmark, underscoring an increasingly visible global divide.

The real-world evidence continues to mount. Sweden’s near-eradication of smoking through the widespread adoption of smokeless alternatives, along with New Zealand’s sharp decline in smoking following its embrace of vaping, stand as tangible demonstrations of what effective harm reduction can achieve. Other countries with historically high smoking rates have begun to see measurable progress soon after adopting similar strategies.

Grecja has made harm reduction a central pillar of its National Action Plan Against Smoking, approving science-based health claims for heated tobacco products and recording a drop in smoking prevalence from 42 percent to 36 percent between 2021 and 2024, a 14 percent reduction in just three years. After Czechy embedded harm reduction principles into its national addiction strategy, the country emerged as an EU leader in smoking reduction, achieving a 23 percent decline over the same period.

As these national experiments continue to attract attention, the WHO’s prohibition-heavy framework increasingly appears disconnected from empirical reality. What is framed institutionally as a public health discipline is increasingly described by critics as both draconian and detached, more reflective of doctrinal thinking than of modern public health pragmatism.

COP11 was originally structured to unfold behind closed doors, with limited participation from consumer groups and independent public-health experts supportive of harm reduction. That model weakened over the course of the week. Dissenting governments and civil-society actors successfully pressed for greater transparency and broader inclusion, puncturing what had long served as an organizational echo chamber.

The conference began with the WHO advancing calls for mandatory bans and strict, harmonized rules. It concluded with the adoption of voluntary, forward-leaning recommendations that stopped short of the original ambitions. While subtle in form, this shift represents a meaningful signal that the organization’s hardline approach is losing institutional momentum.

If the WHO continues to disregard mounting scientific evidence and the varied realities of its member states, it risks sidelining itself in the very policy debates it was created to lead. The cracks in the dominance of anti-nicotine hardliners are no longer theoretical. They are widening as more countries reassert sovereignty over public health decision-making and demand policies that prioritize harm reduction, consumer choice, and practical outcomes over outdated dogma.

Oryginalnie opublikowano Tutaj