The WHO's Anti-Nicotine Offensive: Suppressing a Contested Health Benefit?

Editor's note: This republished material by The Exposé rightly criticizes the World Health Organization's (WHO) anti-nicotine campaign that has energized people already skeptical of mainstream health institutions, reinforcing a growing alternative-health movement that justifiably opposes WHO and big pharma. Global regulators from the WHO on down are aggressively suppressing nicotine through politically driven policies, with several researchers and investigators seeing this as consistent claims that nicotine may play an under-recognized therapeutic or protective role. Although this Exposé content does not provide scientific evidence to validate some theories—such as the controversial focus on venom-like compounds loaded into the Covid injections and nicotine's potential counteracting effects—it contributes to a shared growing narrative of institutional distrust that is fueling the rapid spread and influence of these alternative explanations.
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WHO's anti-nicotine campaign turns dirty

By Rhoda Wilson | December 3, 2025 | 6 Comments

In mid-November, the WHO held its 11th Conference of the Parties ("COP11") to the WHO FCTC, which concluded with a series of critical decisions on global tobacco control.

Adopted by the 56th World Health Assembly on 21 May 2003, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control ("WHO FCTC") is the first treaty negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organisation. It is "one of the most widely embraced UN treaties in history – that commits countries to ending the global tobacco epidemic," a press release boasts.

The use of the "most widely embraced" makes it sound as if countries are enthusiastically and willingly part of it. However, as Roger Bate describes below, WHO appears to be using bullying tactics to make some countries comply with its agenda.

Why are they so obsessed with banning tobacco or, perhaps more accurately, nicotine? Is it because of the possible health benefits of nicotine?

 

The WHO's Campaign Against Safe Nicotine

By Roger Bate, as published by Brownstone Institute on 27 November 2025

Every two years, the 183 Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (“FCTC”) meet for the Conference of the Parties ("COP"). This is the treaty’s governing body: a closed-door diplomatic forum where decisions are made on global tobacco policy, regulatory guidelines, technical documents and the political direction of the treaty system.

Civil society is largely excluded. Journalists are barely tolerated. Outsiders appear only in tightly controlled "public sessions," while all substantive negotiations occur behind locked doors. These meetings are dominated by the FCTC Secretariat and a small constellation of Bloomberg-funded NGOs that orbit it. What they endorse becomes the agenda; what they oppose is often treated as illegitimate. That structure is an essential backdrop to the story of COP11.

The most revealing episode from COP11 was not about taxes or liability. It was the campaign against a small group of countries – Saint Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, New Zealand, the Philippines and others – that dared to raise an uncomfortable but obvious point: safer nicotine products exist, millions use them, and the treaty should look honestly at the evidence. For this, they were attacked, shamed and accused of serving tobacco interests. The charge is not only false but a calculated lie designed to protect the ideological authority of the FCTC machine.

The insiders – the Bloomberg-funded NGOs, Secretariat technocrats and a few entrenched academics – know harm reduction works. They know adult smokers switch when safer products are available. And they know acknowledging this would expose the limits of the FCTC's own strategies. Rather than confront that reality, they target the nations that speak it out loud.

A Simple Request: "Can We Look at the Evidence?"

Saint Kitts & Nevis put forward a reasonable proposal at COP10: create a working group on tobacco harm reduction, grounded in Article 1(d) of the treaty, which explicitly defines tobacco control as including harm reduction. It was bureaucratic rather than revolutionary – essentially a request for evidence review. By COP11, the same states, joined by Dominica and quietly supported by others, backed language recognising the difference between combustible and non-combustible products. New Zealand came not with theory but with results. Smoking there has collapsed faster than almost anywhere else, driven by vaping and other safer products regulated within a robust national framework. The Philippines brought its new law on vapes and heated tobacco, debated and passed domestically, reflecting local science and consumer realities.

None of these countries is a tobacco industry hub. None were asking for smoking deregulation. They were asking for proportionate regulation based on risk. Their positions reflected either data, national policy, or both.

The FCTC Ecosystem's Response: Smear, Distract, Invent "Interference"

Before delegates even arrived, the Secretariat set the trap. The COP11 agenda omitted Article 1(d)'s harm-reduction clause and instead framed the discussion under Article 5.3 – the anti-industry article. This reframing transformed a scientific question into a suspicion of misconduct. The message was unmistakable: any mention of relative risk would be treated as potential interference.

Bloomberg-funded Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids then launched a public campaign accusing small Caribbean governments of being targeted by tobacco companies – an allegation made without evidence. The Global Alliance for Tobacco Control piled on by giving Saint Kitts & Nevis and Dominica its "Dirty Ashtray Award," a childish ritual meant to shame any delegation that challenges anti-THR orthodoxy. Meanwhile, the University of Bath's Tobacco Tactics platform produced another round of insinuations, asserting that THR positions are inherently industry-aligned, regardless of their origin.

This was not policy analysis. It was ideological enforcement: delegations were told that any deviation from the Secretariat's anti-THR line would be punished and publicly delegitimised.

They Know Harm Reduction Works

The dishonesty of these attacks is compounded by the fact that the insiders know harm reduction succeeds wherever it is permitted. Sweden has nearly eliminated smoking because adults switched to snus and nicotine pouches. Japan experienced a historic decline in cigarette sales after heated tobacco products became widely available. Norway's smoking rate collapsed as snus use rose, especially among women. New Zealand's rapid fall in smoking is already the most dramatic in the developed world.

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Discussion on nicotine:

The Other "N" Word