The Global Echo Chamber: How the WHO’s Tobacco Control Conference Became a Parade of Failure

Alan Gore 26 June 2025

Another year. Another WHO-backed tobacco control conference. Another missed opportunity to save millions of lives.

This latest global gathering of so-called public health experts, officials, and campaigners, lavishly funded and tightly stage-managed, was once again presented as a milestone in the fight against smoking. But strip away the polished speeches and taxpayer-funded brochures, and what are we left with?

The same tired ideology. The same hostility to innovation. And the same stubborn refusal to acknowledge that harm reduction works.

A Global Forum That Shuts Out Real Solutions

The WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) was supposed to be about reducing smoking-related death and disease. But somewhere along the way, it turned into a prohibitionist crusade. Instead of embracing new tools like vaping, nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco products, this conference doubled down on fearmongering, misinformation, and authoritarian control.

Vapers? Not welcome.

Public health experts advocating for harm reduction? Shut out.

Consumers, millions of them, many who’ve quit smoking thanks to safer alternatives? Ignored entirely. Here are some from Australia.

This was not a conference. It was an echo chamber.

Bloomberg’s Billions: How Ideology Hijacked Global Health

One cannot talk about the WHO’s toxic approach to tobacco policy without mentioning Michael Bloomberg.

The billionaire former New York mayor has poured over $1.6 billion into anti-tobacco and anti-nicotine campaigns through his Bloomberg Philanthropies. And while he may have good intentions, the effect has been disastrous for public health.

Bloomberg’s money doesn’t just support tobacco control, it shapes it. His grants fund NGOs, research bodies, and even government programmes in low- and middle-income countries, all of which must align with his ideological opposition to tobacco harm reduction. That means:

• No support for vaping.

• No room for pouches or heat-not-burn products.

• No tolerance for consumer voices or alternative views.

Instead of supporting innovation that could save lives, Bloomberg’s agenda has institutionalised abstinence-only dogma. And it has given unelected billionaires undue influence over global health policies that affect millions of people in countries he will never visit.

This is philanthro-colonialism at its worst, using money to impose policy on nations that need solutions, not ideology.

Science Silenced, Ideology Amplified

While the rest of the world moves forward with science-led harm reduction strategies, the WHO’s conference clings to a 20th-century playbook. Attendees cheered policies that:

• Ban or severely restrict vaping products, even where they’ve been proven to help adults quit smoking.

• Criminalise possession or use of nicotine alternatives in low- and middle-income countries.

• Label all forms of nicotine use as morally repugnant, regardless of risk profile.

Meanwhile, evidence from countries like Sweden, Japan, New Zealand, and the UK, where harm reduction has led to record-low smoking rates, was conveniently ignored.

The WHO doesn’t lack data. It lacks the humility to change course.

Policy Dictated by the Privileged

Perhaps the most galling aspect of the conference is who decides global policy: wealthy bureaucrats, Western academics, and NGO elites far removed from the communities they claim to protect.

Where were the voices from the Global South? From people living in countries with high smoking rates and no access to affordable alternatives?

Instead of helping these countries build sensible, regulated markets for low-risk products, the WHO pushes abstinence-only policies that don’t work, while funding crackdowns and stigmatising users.

This is not public health. This is ideological colonialism fuelled by Bloomberg’s billions and enforced by the WHO.

What About the Actual Results?

Let’s talk outcomes.

Despite two decades of FCTC summits, declarations, and press releases:

• Smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death globally.

• Black markets for tobacco and nicotine products are booming.

• Billions of dollars are spent on enforcement and surveillance, while cessation rates stagnate.

Contrast that with Sweden’s evidence-led, consumer-first harm reduction model, where:

• Smoking rates are just over 5%.

• Lung cancer deaths are 61% lower than the EU average.

• Nicotine use continues, but smoking is nearly eradicated.

  
  

Sweden wasn’t even mentioned at the conference.

A Theatre of Public Health Failure

The WHO’s global tobacco control conference has become little more than political theatre, a self-congratulatory ritual where ideological purity matters more than saving lives.

And let’s be blunt: people are dying because of it.

Until this movement acknowledges that adults deserve access to safer alternatives, that risk reduction is not a sin, and that policy must follow evidence, not emotion, the conference will continue to be part of the problem, not the solution.

Time for a Reset

We don’t need another closed-door summit preaching the same outdated dogma. We need:

• Real inclusion of consumer voices.

• Genuine engagement with emerging science.

• Policies grounded in compassion and pragmatism, not billionaire ideology.

  
  

The WHO’s war on nicotine must end. The fight against smoking must begin again with honesty, humility, and a willingness to embrace the tools that work.