WHO FCTC COP-6 report urges countries to consider banning ENDS (but not cigarettes), taxing ENDS and/or imposing other unwarranted regulations

[Bill Godshall]

WHO FCTC COP-6 issues report at
http://apps.who.int/gb/fctc/PDF/cop6/FCTC_COP6_AR2-en.pdf

The WHO FCTC COP-6 report (see item 4.4.2) urges nations to protect cigarettes and threaten the lives of vapers, smokers and secondhand smokers by:
- inviting parties/nations “to consider prohibiting or regulating ENDS” (but not cigarettes),
- inviting parties/nations “to consider banning or restricting advertising, promotion and sponsorship of ENDS”, and by
- requesting “the Convention Secretariate to invite WHO to prepare an expert report” that once again repeats false and misleading claims about the scientific evidence on ENDS in preparation for the WHO FCTC COP-7 meeting in India in 2016.
http://www.clivebates.com/documents/COP6ENDSFinal.pdf

The WHO FCTC COP-6 report (see item 4.4.1) protects cigarettes and threatens lives of smokeless tobacco users, smokers and secondhand smokers by:
- falsely claiming that many non tobacco products widely used in SE Asia are smokeless tobacco products,
- grossly exaggerating the negligible disease risks of smokeless tobacco products,
- failing to acknowledge that smokeless tobacco products are far less hazardous than cigarettes and have helped more than a million smokers quit,
- urging parties/nations to consider banning “the import, manufacture and sale” of smokeless tobacco products (but not cigarettes), and by
- urging parties/nations to tax smokeless tobacco at the same rate as cigarettes or at 70% of the price of smokeless tobacco.
http://www.clivebates.com/documents/COP6SmokelessFinal.pdf
U.N.'s World Health Organization urges global tobacco tax hike - Washington Times

Professor Gerry Stimson – reaction to WHO FCTC position on e-cigarettes (ENDS)
Professor Gerry Stimson – reaction to WHO FCTC position on e-cigarettes (ENDS) « The counterfactual

Clive Bates has updated Gerry Stimson's commentary with some additional WHO documents.

 

[Augmented Dog]

This beyond absurd.
What else can be said?

 

[Nate760]

From Professor Stimson:

It [WHO declaration] places all its emphasis on minor, hypothetical or imaginary risks and gives no emphasis to the great opportunities that arise from having a popular replacement for smoking with likely 95-100 per cent lower risk than cigarettes.

That's because "public health" policy has nothing whatsoever to do with public health. It's all about one tiny group of privileged bureaucrats trying to impose their vision of social orthodoxy on everyone else. They consider their social engineering goals to be of such paramount importance that any length of dishonesty or obfuscation is justified in achieving them. They are so blinded by their quest for totalitarian utopia that they can't even be bothered to comprehend the fact that cigarette smoking, tobacco, and nicotine are not all the same thing. They (and this is particularly true of the WHO) do not indulge even a passing concern for the right of individual human beings to make their own choices about their own bodies. It is, for all intents and purposes, a plantation mentality: "These people are too stupid to know what's in their best interest, so they need me, the kindly overseer, to make their decisions for them and keep them safe from themselves."

 

[DrMA]

How likely is it that we'll see these desk murderers held accountable for their crimes against humanity?

 

[Nate760]

How likely is it that we'll see these desk murderers held accountable for their crimes against humanity?

History will hold them accountable (though perhaps not in our lifetime), but none of them will ever personally face any criminal or civil penalty, despite the fact that in practical terms, their crimes are effectively indistinguishable from those of the tobacco industry, and were committed with equal malice aforethought.