By Roger Bate at Brownstone dot org.

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 recognizing 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: delegatio...