Time to get out of failed tobacco control industry? You have to be Russian to say that without fear

“Russia has to review the effectiveness of its participation in global structures trying to eliminate tobacco.” That, namely, is the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), a treaty adopted on 21 May 2003. I’ve just quoted an absolutely private opinion of two researchers, no more. But, today, you have to be Russian to publish such a document and circulate it in public or in government circles, feeling no fear. Researchers’ credentials are impeccable, one of them is not only a professor, but a deputy minister of finance of the Russian government, the other is a known statistician. They could have hit the Tobacco Control industry where it hurts, namely, explore its “junk science” which claims that each and every aliment is from smoking. But our two mathematicians limit themselves to the figures that WHO FCTC itself is presenting to us. First, the researchers say that the methods of getting data on who is giving up smoking are somehow opaque. But in any case, these figures do not go down, globally or in Russia. And, also, the ultimate aim of the whole exercise should be people getting healthier and happier as a result of their stubbing out the cigarette, not the stubbing out itself. And that result WHO FCTC is not even trying to produce. Second, WHO FCTC is actually producing the reverse picture. How is that possible that the rate of smokers in the world’s population went down, but at the same time the numbers of those who “died of smoking” have gone up (by 33 per cent)? You have to admit that either tobacco has somehow become more deadly, or that WHO FCTC is bungling its figures. I would not expect any immediate governmental reaction to that research, but then here, in Moscow, it’s a grain that falls on well-watered ground. WHO FCTC is not the only international structure that the Russian public and government are ready to exit. In recent months my country has severed ties with the Council of Europe, has left the European Convention on Human Rights, or the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, or… The reason, in all cases, is cheating and lying. When your partner is complying with a treaty only when it fits his interests, not yours, it’s called cheating. When that partner is giving false facts to prove his point, it’s lying. But in most cases, such a partner will portray your abrogation of that treaty as an unbelievable, grisly, abominable, immoral act. So it takes a special situation to finally say “I’ve had enough”. It was easy for Russia to get rid of partners’ who cheated militarily or on human rights. WHO is something else. Everybody, and not only in Russia, knows that you have to do something with that outfit. But the mentioned cries about the immoral nature of such ideas are still scaring a lot of folks. But other folks are getting angry. Imposing harsh and useless tobacco control policies all over the world is not the only thing the WHO is doing. It’s also trying to become a world policeman in anything related to health, while FCTC has served only as a warm-up exercise in that regard. Let’s have a look at the ideas voiced by the one and only Bill Gates, who often takes the role of a spokesman of the global medical lobby. He wrote, recently, in the New York Times, about the need to create the Global Health Emergency Corps. In fact, he says, the WHO is already building it. That, essentially, is about global control over national public health agencies. The heads of such will, at best, have dual responsibility, one to its own government, and the other to the WHO. And, Gates concludes, “We need wealthier countries to step up and provide funding to make this a reality.” That, of course, is all about the WHO’s current preoccupation – something called the International Treaty on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response. It’s supposed to be tailored after the FCTC, and signed by everybody in the world. But Gates is right in assuming that a signature on a paper is not enough. What’s needed, is making health automatically obligatory on a global basis, maybe even regardless of national governments’ position. Now, just imagine someone coming to Vladimir Putin (or any other national leader), saying: we have a pandemic again, I’m closing your/our country down, will tell you when to resume governing it. So, surely, the WHO is under a cloud all over the world now. And especially so in Russia, already fed up with participating in supranational bodies with their own, often failed, agendas. It’s a long story to tell if the recent global Covid response was a success or a failure. Enough is to say that a lot of people remember the lockdowns and the rest of it with a shudder and with a “never again, even if it will be a bubonic plague”. Some societies may have accepted such harsh measures, but the Russian one is not among them. While the WHO’s way of fighting tobacco – of course, it has failed. Just look at the world’s leader in fighting smoke, Australia, where the smoking rates stay stable among adults and climbing among the young. So nobody should invent “one-size-fits-all” measures and hope to impose them on everybody else. We – the world – are facing a most interesting crisis, when the war in Europe is only one extreme manifestation of many things coming to a head. People talk, all the time, about the failures of this or that project or initiative, and mostly lower their voices in such cases. But the most serious proof of something really big going on is when a lot of people or nations finally start to do something about it. Calling a spade a spade, not to mention the scrapping of that spade, takes extreme situations, when the world is really starting to change. Looks like we are facing that kind of era now. The author is a columnist for the Russian State agency website ria.ru, as well as for other publications. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.