Opening of the tenth session of the Conference of the Parties on Tobacco Control

The tenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control will be held from 5 to 10 February 2024 in Panama. Advertising, product regulation, human rights, the environment, and treaty implementation mechanisms are all on the busy agenda. The tobacco industry, which is excluded from the treaty, is nevertheless trying to influence the negotiation process in its favour.

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), ratified by 182 countries (parties) and the European Union, is the first international health treaty developed under the aegis of the WHO. It aims to provide parties with an articulated strategy and tools to protect populations from the health, social and environmental consequences of tobacco consumption.

Entering into force in 2005, the treaty's decision-making body, the Conference of the Parties (COP), meets every two years to ensure its implementation, effectiveness and adaptation. This 10^th session of the COP (COP10), which is therefore an emanation of the countries parties, is held in Panama from February 5 to 10, 2024[1].

A substantial agenda

The previous COP session was held virtually due to the Covid health situation and a large number of agenda items were then postponed for discussion at the current session.

Several decisions concern important themes of the treaty. They concern in particular the regulation of tobacco products, and include measures to complete the practical arsenal to combat advertising and promotions via new means of communication, such as social networks. The question of the responsibility of the tobacco industry in the tobacco epidemic is part of the provisions of the treaty and remains an area to be developed.

The treaty itself provided that countries adopt additional provisions to the convention, based on the evolution of knowledge and the epidemic. All the thinking on the prospect of a tobacco-free generation and the exit of tobacco from society is part of this perspective. The implementation of the FCTC treaty is also integrated into the framework of other existing international treaties or those under negotiation. This is particularly the case for conventions relating to human rights, a theme also on the agenda, as well as environmental issues.

One of the features of this treaty is the exclusion of the tobacco industry, considering that the objectives of this industry and those of public health are irreconcilable.

The FCTC and the WHO, targets of industrialists

The topic of emerging products is one that should generate the most debate. Faced with the decline in smoking worldwide, tobacco companies are seeking to promote their new products (heated tobacco, closed-system electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches) as solutions to the smoking epidemic and want to put pressure on future decisions.

While heated tobacco devices and nicotine pouches are mainly supported by tobacco multinationals, the issue of e-cigarettes is more complex. Like the WHO, anti-tobacco activists highlight the lack of perspective on the long-term consequences of vaping. The pro-vaping lobby, for its part, brings together a more heterogeneous coalition, as Tom Gatehouse, a researcher at the University of Bath within the Tobacco Tactics group, points out.[2]. We thus find there the tobacco manufacturers and the players in vaping[3] (resellers, manufacturers), whose interests may be divergent, but who seek through their lobbying actions to invite themselves back to the negotiating table. Groups claiming to represent vapers, such as the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations (INNCO)[4], are for their part mainly financed by the tobacco industry.

This coalition seeks to counter the FCTC and the WHO, perceived as "prohibitionist" because not very receptive to electronic cigarettes. The destabilization of COP10 is even one of the objectives displayed internally by certain cigarette manufacturers: in September 2023, Grégoire Verdeaux, senior vice president of external affairs at Philip Morris International (PMI), had thus urged his employees to to put pressure on the Member States, with a view to relaxing regulations on heated tobacco and electronic cigarettes. As with other editions, COP10 therefore opens against a backdrop of struggle between health stakeholders and the tobacco and vaping industry.

Keywords: Framework Convention, Conference of the Parties, Panama, tobacco industry, vaping

©Tobacco Free Generation

M.F.

[1] Ferney J, Global Anti-Tobacco Treaty: WHO's New Offensive Against Manufacturers, La Croix, published February 4, 2024, consulted February 5, 2024.

[2] The fight over vaping: Lobbyists, campaigners clash before summit, Digital Journal/AFP, published February 3, 2024, accessed February 5, 2024.

[3] Garcia V, "For a free vape!": the shady methods of the vaping lobby, L'Express, published November 14, 2023, consulted February 5, 2024.

[4] International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organizations (INNCO), Tobacco Tactics, updated December 15, 2023, accessed February 5, 2024.

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