NEWS
WILL FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON TOBACCO
CONTROL’S GOVERNING BODY HELP OR HINDER
VAPING INDUSTRY AT NOVEMBER’S COP7 MEETING?
By Marina Murphy, BAT
IF THE LAST ONE WAS ANYTHING TO GO
BY, WE CAN EXPECT E-CIGARETTES AND
ENDS (ELECTRONIC NICOTINE DELIVERY
DEVICES) TO BE TOP OF THE AGENDA
AT THE NEXT CONFERENCE OF THE
PARTIES (COP) IN INDIA IN NOVEMBER.
The COP is the ‘bi-annual meeting
of the signatories of the Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC),
the first international treaty negotiated
under the auspices of the World Health
Organisation (WHO). The COP is the
governing body of the FCTC and can
make amendments to the convention as
they see fit. However, it’s not easy, as
the COP is made up of representatives
of the nearly two hundred countries
that have signed up to the convention.
What the COP recommends is very
important, because it provides guidance
to countries around the world looking to
regulate tobacco products. You could
argue that the only similarity between
e-cigarettes and real cigarettes is the
word ‘cigarette’. And the FCTC was
established before e-cigarettes were
even on the radar. But this didn’t stop
e-cigarettes being very much on the
radar at the last COP in Russia in 2014.
Things did not go smoothly.
Before the meeting even got underway,
there was reaction to a leaked document
32 ISSUE 07 VAPOUROUND MAGAZINE
that revealed the WHO’s view that
e-cigarettes were a ‘threat to public
health’ and their intention to classify
them as tobacco products. Clearly, at
that point, the WHO saw e-cigarettes
very much as part of the problem
rather than a solution. The backlash
to this document, however, meant that
e-cigarettes and ENDS were at that time
not deemed tobacco products. It was
decided that a group of independent
scientific experts would be convened
to provide an expert report on ENDS
in advance of the next COP – this one!
But the proceedings of the independent
scientific group were totally unclear,
including the composition of the group.
To date, the report has not been made
public and it remains to be seen what the
WHO and COP will do about ENDS.
This is not the first time that the WHO
has been less than transparent on
the issue of tobacco control. At the
last COP, members of the public and
journalists were ejected from the public
gallery and so were unabl e to observe
or report on plenary sessions that are
meant to be public. Michiel Reerink,
JTI’s Global Regulatory Strategy VicePresident, was quoted this year as
saying that nobody would argue against
the need for tobacco to be appropriately
regulated, but that there was a right
way and a wrong way of achieving that.
‘Excluding the public and the media
from debates amounts to censorship,
and is unacceptable from a publiclyfunded organization,’ he said.
‘This begs the question: what does
the WHO have to hide?’
COP6 – THAT LETTER!
The COP and the FCTC were all over
the news before their last get together in
October 2014. The reason – a letter to
Margaret Chan, Director General of the
WHO. In May of that year, 53 scientists
from 15 countries got together to put pen
to paper to protest the WHO’s plans for
e-cigarettes and ENDS. The interest
was such that there was media coverage
everywhere from the US, across Europe,
Australia, Africa, Japan, Thailand,
Malaysia, Korea, India… the list goes on.
Clearly, there is a lot of interest in the
WHO’s plans for e-cigarettes and
this will no doubt be the case again this
time around.
In this letter, the scientists argued that
by classifying e-cigarettes as tobacco,
the WHO risked missing an opportunity
to drastically reduce smoking and the
illness and death associated with it.
They said that e-cigarettes and other
reduced risk products could play a
significant role in meeting the 2025 UN