World No Tobacco Day 2025: A Global Campaign Against Tobacco Harm Reduction, Not Tobacco

Alan Gor 01 June 2025

This year’s World No Tobacco Day, led again by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), had precious little to say about tobacco. This substance kills over 8 million people each year. Instead, the campaign focused obsessively on attacking vaping and other nicotine alternatives, conflating them with combustible tobacco in one of the most egregious misrepresentations of public health priorities we’ve seen to date.

Rather than addressing the urgent need to reduce smoking, which still claims far too many lives globally, the WHO chose to run an emotionally manipulative campaign featuring slogans like:

• “Flavours Hide the Truth”

• “Bright Products. Dark Intentions.”

• “Sugar-coated Lies”

Each one accompanied by dramatic imagery of skulls, schoolchildren, and candy-coloured packaging. The clear message? Vaping is the new enemy, and flavours are the bait. But here’s the uncomfortable truth the WHO refuses to confront: cigarette smoking is still a major global health crisis, and its persistence is directly enabled when safer alternatives like vaping are demonised, restricted, or banned outright.

Australia is a prime example of the consequences of prohibition.

 Instead of reducing harm, its extreme anti-vaping laws have created the perfect conditions for a thriving black market, fuelled organised crime, and led to firebombings, violence, and even deaths. Meanwhile, smoking rates have barely budged, and adult smokers are denied access to safer alternatives. This is a policy failure. This is what the WHO and its FCTC have created.

The Maldives: A Case Study in Policy Failure

The Maldives offers a stark example of the consequences of such prohibitionist policies. In November 2024, the Maldivian government implemented a comprehensive ban on importing, selling, and using vaping products, including their components. This decision was part of a broader initiative to curb tobacco consumption, which also included increasing import duties on cigarettes and beedi from MVR 3 to MVR 8 and a 50% hike in taxes.

Despite these stringent measures, smoking remains a significant public health issue in the Maldives. As of 2022, the adult smoking prevalence stood at 27.3%, with a staggering 43.6% of men and 3.7% of women identified as smokers. Moreover, approximately 203 deaths annually, accounting for 12.8% of all deaths in the country, are attributed to tobacco use.

The ban on vaping has not only failed to reduce smoking rates but has also led to unintended consequences. Experts warn that such prohibitive measures, without providing safer alternatives, can drive consumers towards unregulated markets, potentially exacerbating health risks.

Vietnam: A Rising Smoking Epidemic Amid Vaping Bans

Vietnam presents another cautionary tale. In November 2024, the Vietnamese National Assembly passed Resolution 173/2024/QH15, instituting a comprehensive ban on the production, distribution, importation, storage, transportation, and use of e-cigarettes, vaping products, and heated tobacco devices, effective January 1, 2025. 

This policy shift comes despite Vietnam’s already high smoking rates. As of 2022, the adult smoking prevalence stood at 22.7%, with a striking gender disparity: 44.3% of males and only 2.2% of females were tobacco users. Smoking remains a significant public health issue, with more than 100,000 deaths annually attributed to tobacco use. 

Critics argue that the vaping ban may exacerbate the smoking epidemic by removing a less harmful alternative for smokers seeking to quit. Furthermore, there are concerns that such prohibitive measures could fuel the black market for e-cigarettes and related products, leading to unregulated and potentially more dangerous consumption.

An Ideological War, Not a Public Health Campaign

This shift is no accident. The WHO and FCTC have become so entrenched in prohibitionist ideology that they now view nicotine itself, regardless of delivery method, as the enemy. Their messaging this year made that crystal clear, using alarmist language about vaping “hooking a new generation” and calling for bans and restrictions, not regulation or education.

This isn’t public health. This is moral panic.

Instead of focusing on the actual dangers of smoking, like cancer, heart disease, and emphysema, the WHO is busy trying to erase the progress being made by countries that embrace harm reduction. Countries like Sweden and the UK are seeing historic declines in smoking thanks to pragmatic, science-based approaches to vaping and other smoke-free products.

The Hypocrisy Is Glaring

Consider this:

• Sweden is on track to become the first smoke-free country in the EU, largely because of its harm reduction policies, including widespread access to snus and vaping.

• The UK actively promotes vaping as a safer alternative and has seen major declines in smoking.

• New Zealand is seeing success with a balanced approach to vaping.

Meanwhile, the WHO is urging countries to do the opposite, ignoring science, pushing bans, and stigmatising people who use nicotine in safer forms.

Why? Because it fits their narrative. A narrative that refuses to adapt, refuses to acknowledge real-world evidence, and refuses to admit that harm reduction works.

The Result? More Smoking, More Harm

By waging war on vaping instead of tobacco, the WHO and FCTC are:

• Protecting the cigarette trade (ironically boosting the very thing they claim to be fighting),

• Driving people back to smoking (especially in countries where vaping has been banned or restricted),

• Pushing safer products into black markets, where they’re unregulated and accessible to youth,

• Ignoring adult smokers in low- and middle-income countries, who now have fewer affordable options to quit.

This year’s World No Tobacco Day could have celebrated progress. It could have supported smokers trying to quit. It could have embraced innovation and compassion. Instead, it turned into a smear campaign against some of the most powerful harm reduction tools we have.

It’s Time to Take the “Tobacco” Back in Tobacco Control

World No Tobacco Day should be about reducing the human toll of smoking, not waging war on nicotine in all its forms.

If the WHO and FCTC want to be taken seriously, they must:

• Acknowledge the growing body of evidence supporting safer nicotine products,

• Stop conflating smoking with vaping,

• Promote regulation over prohibition,

• And include people who use nicotine in the conversation about their health.

Until then, World No Tobacco Day will remain a tragic irony, another missed opportunity to truly help people live longer, healthier lives.