In February of this year, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) marked the 20th year that this international treaty entered into force. The treaty has 168 signatories, including the European Union, and 183 parties covering more than 90 percent of the world population, making it one of the most widely embraced treaties in UN history.
This treaty aims to address the global tobacco epidemic and protect present and future generations from the devastating effects of tobacco use and includes a number of measures aimed at reducing the demand and supply of tobacco, including price and tax measures to reduce tobacco use, restrictions on tobacco advertising and promotion, requirements for health warnings on packaging, protection from exposure to tobacco smoke and regulation of the contents of tobacco products.
The treaty has a Conference of the Parties (COP) that regularly meets to make decisions and guide implementation.
Then there is this Global Alliance for Tobacco Control (GATC) which is a group of non-government and civil society organizations from around the world and one of the spectators in this gathering of representatives from sovereign nations. It is funded by a variety of sources, including grants from government and foundations like Bloomberg Philosophies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
GATC’s funders may be well meaning. Bloomberg and Gates for instance have both called on government and business leaders to make the fight against tobacco a priority by increasing resources for tobacco control and implementing “proven” policies to reduce tobacco use.
The operative word is “proven.”
In many countries including the Philippines, raising taxes on tobacco products which is one of the measures of the WHO FCTC to curb smoking has instead encouraged smuggling of illicit cigarettes and vape products and has not reduced smoking incidence as much as expected.
The use of safer alternatives like regulated vapes including e-cigarettes is being torpedoed and maligned by anti-tobacco groups needlessly.
On the sidelines of the 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the WHO FCTC, held in Panama in February 2024, this GATC handed the Dirty Ashtray Award to the delegation from the Philippines for the fifth time last year.
The GATC is an observer which means it has no vote nor binding authority. It can watch, protest and congratulate. But it has no seat at the table where national sovereignty meets public health policy. When it pretends otherwise, it crosses from advocacy into over-reach.
Yes, the peanut gallery, which in the days of vaudeville refer to the cheapest and rowdiest seats in the theater, may shout. But the players on the field decide the game.
The Philippines should not be the poster child for the peanut-gallery’s ire. In fact, it deserves credit. With RA 11900 or the Vape Law fully in place, it has taken steps to ensure some 16 million adult smokers access less harmful alternatives to cigarettes. The government has championed a harm reduction agenda, not blind prohibition. We are a nation balancing public health ambition with social realities.
At the same time, real progress is being made elsewhere by countries quietly innovating rather than loudly lecturing. Take the Japan example whose smoking prevalence has gone down from 82.3 percent among men in 1965 to 27.8 percent in 2021.
Despite this, Japan has been the most frequent recipient of this GATC award having received it eight times. The disconnect is glaring.
From Nov. 17 to 22 this year, the 11th session of the Conference of Parties (COP11) will take place in Geneva. And once again, observers like GATC will scrutinize, cheerlead and campaign. Fine. But they have no mandate to condemn or brand governments in a treaty negotiation as villains. To do so is merely symbolic theatre.
In the Philippines’ case, what was branded as “obstruction” was, in truth, due diligence.
Our delegation proposed creating a working group of state parties, assisted by an expert advisory body, to scrutinize the far-reaching “forward-looking measures” in the FCTC agenda – proposals that included bans on tobacco sales, removal of farm support and limits on industry profits.
At the COP10, the Philippines was lauded for its unified and constructive stance. As the late senior deputy executive secretary and head of the Philippine delegation, Hubert Dominic Guevarra, explained, the idea was to ensure “transparency and inclusiveness in decision-making.” Surely this is a reasonable safeguard against hasty, one-sided policymaking.
As the 11th edition of COP looms, that same resolve must stand firm. If the Philippines ends up with yet another “Dirty Ashtray,” it should wear it as proof that it refused to bend to theatrics.
The delegation’s duty is not to please the gallery, but to protect the nation’s sovereignty, autonomy and right to pursue rational, science-based tobacco control. No amount of heckling from the stands should shake that conviction.
Moreover, COP10 Committee A Chair Dr. Nuntavarn Vichit-Vadakan publicly lauded the Philippine delegation for acknowledging the intricacies of national contexts while balancing the requests of other parties with the country’s national interests, calling it a demonstration of the “collaborative spirit essential in negotiations.”
What happened was not tobacco industry interference. Rather, it was responsible governance. The Philippines sought science-based, evidence-tested dialogue over blind consensus. Yet from the sidelines, advocacy groups turned this procedural compromise into political theater, casting the country as the villain. If thoughtful debate now earns a “Dirty Ashtray,” perhaps it’s the award and not the delegation that needs a good cleaning.
Regulators and policy makers are now forced to reckon with technological advances. Alternative nicotine products like e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and vapes are reducing smoking rates worldwide. To ban them or treat them identically with cigarettes is to prolong smoking. Public health necessitates it.
The issue of public health demands seriousness and respect for national prerogatives. It demands acknowledgement of nuance, complexity and trade-offs, especially in developing countries with large adult-smoking populations and livelihood dependencies.
The GATC, no matter how well-intentioned, must remember that it is in the stands, not on the pitch. The COP Secretariat and Parties should remind the spectators that watching from the stands doesn’t come with voting rights and that peanut gallery politics should be kept out of the field.
For comments, email at [email protected]
