Five Years On And The EU Has Learned Nothing

Today Snowdon reported that the EU is set to travel to COP8 in Geneva and demand that vaping be treated exactly the same as smoking for advertising purposes.

In fact, more than that, it will demand that even scenes in films portraying smoking and vaping should be classed as advertising.

In preparation for the event, various documents have been circling the global anti-smoking community to get a consensus on what to ban next. The depiction of tobacco use in the arts is one candidate. You can read the WHO's proposal here. The most notable part of the document is the WHO's intention to include tobacco use on film and television as tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship (TAPS) because:

Entertainment media content such as movies, music videos, online videos, television programmes, streaming services, social media posts, video games and mobile phone applications have all been shown to depict and promote tobacco use and tobacco products in ways that may encourage youth smoking uptake... Therefore, policies that reduce youth exposure to entertainment media depictions are required.

Note the word "may" in there. Because, as usual with tobacco control, there is no evidence whatsoever except for archetypal junk science from - you guessed it - Stan Glantz. They're interfering in the public's entertainment on the say-so of criminally-conflicted and arguably insane single-issue maniacs.

As Snowdon points out, the EU delegation to the FCTC's COP8 in Geneva - of which the UK will be a part - is actually trying to get e-cigs included in this daft policy.

The EU is one of the FCTC's members and, due to its size, it is rather influential. So have they objected to this? Yes, they have. But not because the proposals are too extreme. They object because they don't go far enough. In particular, the EU wants vaping to be included.

The EU welcomes the report of the Expert Group on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and supports its recommendations... [The EU] stresses that TAPS [tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship] regulatory frameworks and their implementation at national, regional and international levels do not only cover all tobacco products, both traditional and emerging ones such as heated products, but should also consider tobacco-related products such as ENDS.

Isn't that incredible? Five years ago the EU were forced to abandon total prohibition of e-cigs - apart from medically licensed ones with a maximum of 4mg nicotine - in their Tobacco products Directive (TPD) but not without a massive struggle.

At the time ASH were arguing for exactly that too. It was only once a lighter touch was applied and Public Health England - acting on recommendations from the Nudge Unit - turned guns away from vaping, that they apparently had an epiphany. The results we have seen since on smoking prevalence are astounding.

Now, you'd think that the EU might look back on 2013 and recognise that they regulated from a position of laughable ignorance back then, wouldn't you? They should be deeply embarrassed about it. But no, today's revelations suggest that they still haven't a fucking clue.

Five years on and the EU has learned absolutely nothing, judging by this

Vapers saw back then how intransigent, opaque, anti-democratic and abusive the EU is. It is why a vast majority voted for leave in the referendum. All this is doing is proving that they were right to do so.

As I understand it from COP7 in India, any EU proposal will be subject to approval from member states in meetings prior to the event. Once a position is agreed, no member state (including the UK) will have any power to object at COP8 because the EU represents all 28.

I guess we will see how serious the Department of Health really is about its Tobacco Control Plan if it allows the EU to do this. The ASA is already working on proposals to relax advertising restrictions on e-cigs rather than prohibiting all marketing outright, so direction of travel in the UK couldn't be further removed from the EU's position. And as for the proposal to ban all media online, this could mean that even bodies like NCSCT (involved in smoking cessation) would not be able to produce films for Facebook and Twitter.

If, as I suspect, the UK Department of Health - who, remember, are advised by ASH about FCTC matters - doesn't nip this in the bud, all arguments that we are better in the EU because we can have input will be washed away. If UK government policy which has produced brilliant results can be undermined by an anti-democratic gravy train urging an entirely unelected and unaccountable global cartel - both of which entirely cut the public out of their discussions - to prohibit vaping adverts worldwide, you have to ask what is the point of being in the EU delegation when we could represent the UK instead. And boy would we be hassling the fuck out of the Department of Health if they proposed this unilaterally. We tried that with the EU and they just cocked a deaf 'un.

We're watching you DoH and ASH. Very. Closely.

This is as daft as it gets and makes me 100% certain that I voted the right way in June 2016. The more of this sickening behind-closed-doors bureaucracy we can chip away at, the better. 

The FCTC's Global Regress Report

This week saw the publication of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control's (FCTC) Global Progress Report following their seventh Conference of the Parties (COP7) in November.

WHOFCTC Global Progress Report is out❗️Find it here together with presentation about main findings https://t.co/MhPv1FuDmv #UNtobaccocontrol pic.twitter.com/9wy4W7XLUr

— WHO FCTC (@FCTCofficial) April 4, 2017

For those not familiar with COP7, it was an event where around a thousand grey, soulless, anti-smoking extremists from all over the world jetted to India on tax-funded expenses and - during the worst lung-choking smog that Delhi has seen for 17 years - spent two days discussing whether or not to ban e-cigs. I went along too out of morbid curiosity; you can read my account here.

The FCTC's report is exactly what we've come to expect from such a hideous, unaccountable and opaque insult to decency and tolerance. However, considering such an inordinate amount of time was spent at the conference agonising on whether to ban vaping outright, or simply handicap it to make absolutely sure it can never significantly threaten the sales of cigarettes, it's interesting to see how they describe this kind of "progress".

You see, considering even the most insane of tobacco controllers concede that e-cigs are less risky than smoking, and that some jusrisdictions are actively promoting vaping as a means of stopping smoking, an outsider would be hard pressed to recognise that seeing as the FCTC - an organisation that supposedly wishes smokers to quit smoking - employs language which suggests the very opposite.

There is an urgent need for Parties − with or without new and emerging tobacco products on the national market − to enact and enforce protective policies and regulations.

That's right. They see an "urgent" need to bring in policies which will "protect" against a device that has helped millions of people switch away from the tobacco that the FCTC loves to hate. They're pretty hot on it too, painstakingly recording what countries are doing to obstruct this new threat to tobacco control industry salaries.

Click to enlarge

For clarity, e-cigs are the bars on the right of that graph. ENDS stands for the deliberately clinical term Electronic Nicotine Delivery Devices. It's worth noting here that it's laughable enough that e-cigs are included in a convention for tobacco control, but the accompanying acronym ENNDS is their classification of e-cigs which contain no nicotine at all. So removed from tobacco are ENNDS that it would be just as logical for the FCTC to suggest regulations on the global colour schemes of double decker buses!

The FCTC's report also singled out specific praise for the EU's wildly damaging Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) (emphases mine).

COP6 urged Parties to consider banning or restricting the advertising, promotion and sponsorship of ENDS. Significant progress in this area was made with the new tobacco products directive (TPD) of the European Union (2014/40/EU).  

The TPD noted that disparities between national laws and practices on advertising and sponsorship concerning electronic cigarettes present an obstacle to the free movement of goods and the freedom to provide services, and create an appreciable risk of competitive distortion. It was therefore necessary to approximate the national provisions on advertising and sponsorship of those products and to give them cross-border effect, ensuring a high level of protection for human health. This restrictive approach was adopted because of the potential risk of nicotine addiction as electronic cigarettes, like traditional cigarettes, normalized tobacco smoking.

It is quite incredible that, with millions of Europeans quitting smoking entirely using e-cigs, or considerably cutting their tobacco consumption, the FCTC considers it "significant progress" that a mountain of red tape has been unleashed on vaping, and a vat of treacle poured over the previously rapid innovation of a disruptive technology. But then, when you are such a bunch of swivel-eyed monomaniacs that you take it as a given that e-cigs 'normalise' smoking when they don't; and that restricting and demonising a pathway out of smoking is somehow 'protecting' health, I suppose the TPD perversely makes sense while nurse tucks you into your straitjacket for the night.

There is a big clue in the report's conclusions as to why the FCTC is concerned about such products, and it's almost Freudian in its make-up.

New and emerging tobacco products continue to spread and become essential elements of the tobacco-use landscape. This will have adverse consequences on tobacco control if policies do not progressively reflect their presence.

"Adverse consequences on tobacco control". Just digest that for a few moments. Not adverse consequences on smoking prevalence or public health, but on tobacco control, because it's quite clear that the industry is mightily threatened by smokers quitting without the help of their local neighbourhood, eye-wateringly salaried tobacco controller. Hence their eagerness to crowbar vaping into tobacco control policy areas wherever they can; the expense account, generous pension and top of the range BMW depends on it.

Comprehensive and concerted actions are needed with the participation of all concerned stakeholders to address such products, including through the development of specific policies to curb their use. 

Curb their use? Seeing as every survey of e-cigs users consistently tells a story of smokers wishing to give up tobacco or reduce the amount they smoke, why is a policy to "curb their use" even remotely consistent with what the FCTC stands for? Especially since harm reduction used to be one of the organisation's main pillars until they changed it to "demand reduction" once a threat to their livelihoods raised its ugly head.

I have to wonder where this leaves supposedly supportive types like Debs Arnott of ASH and Alette Addison of the Department of Health. They were in attendance in India and are apparently fully behind the UK government's entirely different stance on e-cigs. How can they possibly square that with endorsing an approach like this from the FCTC?

What's more, why are we throwing another £15 million at them and not threatening to leave such a basket case convention, instead financing them to spread the same barking lunacy elsewhere in the world?

Do you think it might not be about health after all? Hmm.  

Delhi: Smoggy City, Foggy Minds

Our esteemed mascot asked an interesting parliamentary question recently, which was answered on December 1st.

Philip Davies Conservative, Shipley 

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the officials from his Department who attended the seventh conference of the Parties of World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control met with representatives of the Group Action on Smoking and Health during that conference. 

Nicola Blackwood The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health 

Officials met with a range of public health stakeholders on 12 October 2016 before attending the Conference of the Parties of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Deborah Arnott the Chief Executive of Action on Smoking and Health, attended that meeting. No further meetings were scheduled or held before or during the conference.

I thought that quite strange at the time because, as regular readers will know, I was there and I heard differently. My understanding was that they did indeed hold regular meetings, just in bars and restaurants instead of a sterile room, but meetings during the conference nonetheless.

It seemed to be confirmed by someone who was staying in the same hotel for the duration.

It's clear they were gabbing away constantly while there, after all Deborah Arnott is part of the Department of Health team (though conveniently exempted from FOI requests despite being state-funded) so why wouldn't they?

Strange then, that via inquisitive fellow jewel robber AT we find that no-one at the Department of Health has any recollection of these meetings!

Now, just to remind you, Andrew Black and Alette Addison work in the Department of Health. Could the FOI team not have just asked them? I take it they have telephones these days, or maybe they could have emailed seeing as they had around three weeks to give a reply. Too lazy perhaps?

There is another explanation of course. Perhaps they were all too pissed on Kingfisher beer and local plonk to remember. I suppose it would make the wording of the DoH response technically correct.

Delhi was in the middle of an unprecedented public health crisis brought on by record levels of smog; maybe there were also a few foggy and delicate minds the day after all these meetings, eh? The expenses claims would be interesting to see I reckon.

However, all we know currently is that the meetings occurred and no-one - from the Under-Secretary of State right down to humble DoH grunts - wants to admit that they did. Fancy that!

Reason Does Delhi

If you read my letters from India during COP7, you might see a lot you recognise here from Reason TV.

Especially worth watching out for is the camera trained exclusively on the public area (around 2:10 mins in) as mentioned in my report from the Monday, as well as the peaceful protest by tobacco farmers being aggressively broken up at behest of the FCTC, and the media being physically ejected.

It seems bizarre after watching this, but the WHO at the time actually tried to say that their obnoxious behaviour was not their fault at all; that instead it was those evil tobacco companies just making it all up.

You have the proof above, what are your thoughts?

I might like, at this point, to remind you that Geneva, the venue for COP8, isn't far away and 2018 isn't either. Keep an eye on flights cos they're cheaper if you book early.

Holidays Are Coming

It's been quiet on these pages since COP7, mainly through my having to catch up at Puddlecote Inc after a week away in India, only then to jet off again to a small picturesque town near Hannover for a somewhat hedonistic weekend with a couple of friends. I'm not going to write a lot about the trip; I could justify it by declaring that what happens in Germany stays in Germany but it's more accurate to say that I've forgotten large chunks of it.

I do, however, recall a very pleasant early lunchtime on the Saturday in a small pub containing the welcome sight of ashtrays on the bar. Yes there is a smoking ban but - like a lot of places in Europe - this particular historic pub is one of many in the country to quite rightly ignore it. We didn't have any tobacco on us at the time but the barman was in possession of a large packet of red Pall Mall, so we asked if we could buy a cigarette off of him. He brusquely refused, replying that, no, he won't sell one to us ... he will give it to us to complement our incredibly frothy German liquid lunch.

Whiling away a few hours in good company whilst discussing the hideous personalities in 'public health' was fun, but back in the UK those self same miseries were just beginning their annual Christmas dronefest.

For example, this charmless nerk has been banging on about the Coca-Cola Christmas truck tour for three days straight now.

If you find this promoted tweet as unacceptable as me, please sign @food_active letter to object to this tour in NW https://t.co/3sxXXjVFzl https://t.co/qxdUFAxKxU

— Robin Ireland (@robinHEG) November 20, 2016

Now, this festive roadshow has become something of a staple this time of year and is enjoyed massively by adults and children up and down the country, yet joyless extremists like Ireland would happily see the tour banned and revel in childrens' tears. Yes, they really are that incredibly miserable, the child catcher and Grinch rolled up into one revolting fun-be-damned package.

Meanwhile, capslock-clunking business-hating fanatic Simon Capewell has also been spitting his usual bile at this seasonal treat in The Times.

Councils are being accused of “utter hypocrisy” for promoting a Coca-Cola Christmas lorry tour of the country while calling for curbs on junk food advertising. 

The tour, based on the drinks company’s Christmas advertisement, is visiting 44 sites around Britain and handing out free cans of Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. 

Stops include Harlow, Essex, where the council says on its website that seeing the lorry is an “incredible” experience and urges families to “soak up the festive spirit with seasonal music [and] a free Coca-Cola”. 

Southend-on-Sea, also in Essex, says on its website: “For many, Christmas doesn’t start until the Coca-Cola Christmas truck appears on our television screens and in our towns.”

Yep, a welcome bit of happiness as the nights draw in, what's not to like? Well, for obsessive lunatics like Capewell, quite a lot.

Simon Capewell, vice-president of the Faculty of Public Health charity, said: “It is utter hypocrisy that councils [are] complicit in the marketing of sugary drinks to children while complaining about the burden of obesity.”

Good point. The solution, of course, is for councils to stop complaining about obesity since it's none of their business. Job done, and Capewell could then fuck off; keep fucking off; and when finished all the fucking off he can muster, could put some extra seasonal effort in and fuck off some more.

Coca-Cola said the tour “provides a moment of fun for friends and families in the build-up to Christmas”.

They're correct. It is always worth remembering that Ireland and Capewell are in a vanishingly tiny minority, hurling overwrought hyperbole at Coca-Cola like baboons fling their shit. This pathetic annual screech from their ilk also betrays their insistence that they don't pursue prohibition of sugary drinks, merely moderation. Because if you can't relax and enjoy a Coke and a smile once a year at Christmas when the Coca-Cola truck rolls into town, when the hell can you? There is quite simply no role for 'public health' here, instead it's a perfect example of why they should be cut off without a penny and sent cap-in-hand to JobCentre Plus ... preferably to be forced into litter-picking for McDonald's.

Or, as Simon Cooke put it yesterday on the subject of the Food Active campaign - which attacks the Coca-Cola tour - being funded out of local authority budgets.

What is truly offensive here is that your and my taxes are being used to mount an ill-informed and misleading attack on a private business. Hardly a day passes without one or other story about local councils being forced by budget cuts into closing and reducing services. All of the money for 'Food Active' comes from local council budgets in the North West and they are using it for the express purpose of lobbying for national government to change the law (as well as wanting to ban Coca-Cola's "Happy Holidays" promotion). 

So next time Manchester or Liverpool council leaders wring their hands about shutting down a library or cutting funding for a community centre ask them how they can justify spending money on astroturf political campaigns like 'Food Active'.

Quite. The very last thing councils should be spending their money on is lunatics like Capewell and Ireland to spout their niche hatred of a benign but tasty product and a wildly-successful family day out. If they want to recreate a scene from Scrooge's gloom emporium, they should be doing it with their own cash, not ours.

Fortunately, they're howling at the moon because no-one is taking their shit seriously.

Southend-on-Sea said it did not think promotion of the tour would overshadow its public health work while Harlow said it was up to parents to decide whether to accept a free drink for their children.

Never a truer word said.

You can see the tour schedule of the Coca-Cola truck here ... and since it upsets such bleak, dreary, anti-social cretins, here's a bit of Christmas glitter which will pass them by in their sad, cheerless, miserable lives. Enjoy, and don't waste too much pity on them.

COP7 Delegates Smoked Nearly Half A Million Fags

You may remember that last weekend I wrote about the WHO's finest elite anti-smokers turning up in New Delhi, just in time to see what a real public health crisis looks like.

A researcher was quoted by the New York Times as equating the pollution in terms we can understand.

Sustained exposure to that concentration of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day, said Sarath Guttikunda, the director of Urban Emissions, an independent research group.

On this basis, I did some calculations.

There were 180 countries in attendance, each comprising three delegates, and with other accredited attendees it is reported that around 1,500 were there. Over 8 days that means that the COP7 contingent 'smoked' between them the equivalent of around 480,000 fags!

Yet while waiting for three and a half hours for my pass to enter the venue, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of delegates - you know, the ones who panic about a few wisps of smoke or vapour - worried enough about the danger to take precautions in the form of a mask or other prevention measure. Just saying.

I took some video and pictures while I was there and the boy P has edited it into a concise one minute film. It's a taste of the city under the smog; enjoy.

UK COP7 Delegation Justifies Cuts In Quit Smoking Services

By far the funniest story of this COP7 week for me was the curious case of the voluntary spunking of UK taxes by our delegation, most probably aided and abetted as usual by ASH.

This was the obsequious praise heaped upon our lot in Monday's news round-up.

If you weren't aware of it, this is because when asked for more cash by the FCTC, the UK delegation - while the rest of the world's tobacco tax scroungers at COP7 looked at the floor and wisely sat on their hands - voluntarily coughed up another £15m of your money, with which to bully smokers in other countries. As The Sun explains ...

WHITEHALL busybodies were slammed last night after signing off £15 million of UK taxpayers money to stop people smoking in poor countries like North Korea and Syria. The Department of Health will use Britain’s aid budget to support global quitting measures — prompting calls for the money to be spent on doctors and nurses back in Britain.

The crazy hand out was confirmed yesterday at the UN World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control conference in Greater Noida, India. Britain committed to contributing £3 million per year until 2021 to the ‘Agenda for Sustainable Development’.

Now, if I'm a politician in the UK government, this makes perfect sense to me. Because, you see, they're constantly getting it in the neck for handing out development cash willy-nilly only for governments in developing countries to spend it how they choose (remember India's space programme?).

But this has a tag on it called "bash the smokers" so will be seen as targeted action. Especially since we are talking about those icky foreign smokers, it's just a no-brainer for your common or garden career politician, isn't it? It buys off some of the UKIP-style criticism of overseas aid and is easily explained.

But last night the Department of Health defended the cash boost, saying: “Smoking rates in many countries are much higher than in the UK and all UN members have a role to play in bringing them down to reduce deaths where the need is greatest.”

They're not wrong. UK tobacco controllers have been jubilant about how successful they have been (even though most of the big shift has been down to e-cigs), so why would we need to spend so much cash on UK stop smoking initiatives when attendance at stop smoking services is drastically down?

A sharp decline in the number of smokers using an NHS support programme to help them quit has been linked to the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes. 

Nationwide figures have shown a similar trend to those in the south west of Scotland. 

In 2013, the Information Services Division reported that the number of attempts to stop smoking had fallen by 13% compared with 2012.

This is just part of a fairly long-running trend, numbers using such services have fallen dramatically since 2010 when widespread uptake of e-cigs started to take hold.

Of course, if user numbers are down, it follows naturally that government would be reluctant to spend the same funding on it, hence why stop smoking services are reportedly strapped for cash. In fact, ASH produced a report recently detailing this very phenomena.

Overall, smoking cessation budgets were down: in 39 per cent of local authorities, smoking cessation budgets had been cut compared to only 5 per cent where they had increased. They stayed the same in 54 per cent of local authorities. More than a quarter of local authorities (29 per cent) had seen cuts of more than 5 per cent. 

And rightly so. If fewer people are using the services it's obvious that the funds should be spent elsewhere. As yer man from the Department of Health said above, "smoking rates in many countries are much higher than in the UK", so obviously all committed, upstanding, philanthropic anti-smokers would applaud the cash being diverted from the UK to other places where prevalence is higher. Yes?

Again, as a politician, this is two birds with one stone. I get to give a tangible reason for part of the much-criticised aid budget and also to justify cuts to UK services since it is admitted that tobacco control has been so wildly successful that there is little demand for old-fashioned stop smoking clinics.

My own personal view is that stop smoking services are not required at all, for two reasons. One, it is no role of the state to pay for people to quit something they have chosen to do simply because government doesn't like it; and two, in recent times there are many options other than government interventions which can do the same job. When there are rumours that such services might close, it's a reason for celebration because they are a vast nationwide waste of money. I have to say it is especially sweet to hear about their (quite rightly) being cut in the constituency of one of ASH's lapdogs such as Bob Blackman, something which he complained about recently in the House of Commons. Delicious.

So congratulations to the UK delegation for re-allocating £15m of our taxes from where the tobacco control industry considers it is not needed, to where it is. And it was the UK anti-smoking delegates who went to India and voluntarily signed off the re-distribution.

As a result, from now on the bleating about how stop smoking services are struggling for cash really should cease, because after Monday any sane politician wouldn't even consider changing their mind. After all, ASH and the DH have just admitted that the funding is needed far more elsewhere than in the UK.

I hope they enjoyed that Orchid Award. 

Dateline 2018: A Storm Is Coming

I've been home for just a couple of hours after a particularly revealing week in India for the COP7 conference, and I have to say I'm feeling quite smug.

Long-term readers here will remember that I've been writing for seven years now about how e-cigs have the capacity to show up the tobacco control industry for the corrupt, self-perpetuating, anti-social, health-be-damned gravy train that it has been since the early 1970s. This week has proved that hypothesis 100% correct. 

Trading only on prejudice and the pursuit of power and tax-funding, this gargantuan enterprise has been perverted to such an extent that it is now incapable - due to a tangled web of prior deceit and funding arrangements - to cope adequately with a nimble breakthrough technology such as vaping. The FCTC has spent so much time setting itself up to be untouchable on tobacco, parroting junk science at every opportunity and routinely exploiting children, that it is now so heavily bureaucratic and conflicted that it finds itself totally stuffed and flailing now they have decided (wrongly) that they should deal with e-cigs. 

So what we have seen this week is their usual disingenuous tactics fail miserably, so much so that when the light of publicity is shone in their direction, they scuttle like cockroaches muttering the same old canards they have managed to get away with before, but which simply won't wash anymore. 

Let's list the main ones, eh?

1) Everyone who objects is a shill. 

Perfectly exhibited by this clown, although he is only one of many to have tried this utterly pathetic defence in the past few days.

Delegates attending #COP7FCTC : #Vape "advocates" are the same as #BigTobacco mercenaries. Do not get distracted! Protect your people!

— Jaime Arcila Sierra (@arcilasierra) November 10, 2016

I don't know why such idiots seem to think that accusing perfectly normal, everyday people of being shills is going to help them? It won't make vapers go away, instead it just reinforces the injustice that he and his colleagues are inflicting on them and makes it more likely that they will be active in the future. He is in a political arena but seems incapable of understanding this.

This dismissal of opposing opinions has been a central tactic of anti-tobacco frauds for decades, but it used to be just one of their tools for misleading the public; with e-cigs is has become almost the only one, simply because they don't know how to handle the public they claim to understand because they've never had to before. Therefore it doesn't work, because the storm of social media outrage was overwhelmingly from members of the public who are appalled at the disgusting behaviour of the FCTC in New Delhi.

The FCTC has installed article 5.3 to purposely silence debate; it is its only purpose. But this goes out the window when private citizens get involved. Clinging to such a stupid policy when real people are trying to send messages their way just shows what charlatans tobacco control execs are.

2) Junk science

Debate at the venue in Noida this week has been based entirely on a fabricated fantasy in the form of the laughable COP7 report on e-cigs. It includes every pile of shit that its pharma-conflicted buddies have concocted to try to quell this inconvenient fly in their ointment, and refuses to consider any science - however rigorous and weighty - that might derail their pre-conceived judgement.

I read the documents that were put to the COP7 meeting this week on the subject, and nowhere was it mentioned that the COP7 report had been ripped to shreds by more honest colleagues in their profession. The science on e-cigs only points one way, but the delegates at COP7 think that - just as they did with tobacco - if they just keep lying for long enough, it will all go away and they don't have to change course. They will have to in the end or continue to be mortally embarrassed as they have been this week. But here we are, over a decade since e-cigs arrived on the scene, with their still being incapable of recognising how their reputation is being trashed by their own incompetence.

And talking of incompetence ...

3) Manipulation of the media

The tobacco control industry has relied for many years on the "science by press release" approach whereby a pliant media just parrots what they're told without asking any questions. This just doesn't work when the world can see what tobacco controllers refuse to; that e-cigs are quite obviously a remarkable invention.

The huge uptake of vaping around the world is something the press are now very interested in, and they are asking questions themselves. Apart from a few very lazy hacks, the ears of journalists have been pricked by the visibly accelerating prevalence of vaping and they are curious, especially since vapers tend to be engaged and hunger for news stories about the subject. The upsurge in vaping is a rich seam of visitor clicks for the new online media

In the past the FCTC hasn't needed to be bothered about such things so just trundle out bland - and almost invariably inaccurate - messages to the media before retiring to their state-funded hotels to get pissed and plan their next jamboree.

It doesn't work with vaping and leads to crashingly embarrassing occasions such as this where their spokesperson not only has no clue about the subject matter, but also seems not to understand how their own processes work.

Do watch this, because it highlights how extremely incompetent the organisers of COP7 really are.

5) David fighting Goliath

This deliberately constructed fallacy is one which has served the tobacco control industry well for many years. They tap into the public's mistrust of big businesses - the ones who make cigarettes in particular - and portray themselves as poor, marginalised, under-funded philanthropists fighting against an incomparably-funded enemy.

But the vast majority of e-cig manufacturers are small independent businesses, which the Goliath of tobacco control is putting to the sword at every opportunity worldwide. There were around a thousand activists at COP7, almost exclusively funded by global governments and with the added bonus of patronage from multi-national pharmaceutical companies.

When you have government representatives on all your delegations; are funded generously by one of the most lucrative transnational sectors of big business; spend a week calling unpaid citizen vapers shills and encouraging governments to put small independent start-ups out of business with impossible regulations and state-sanctioned bans; and have the power to ban the press from reporting on what you are doing, you are no longer the fucking David you like to pretend to be!

The tobacco control industry has never been the poor underfunded underdog, and the FCTC's approach to e-cigs proves this fact categorically.

So what now?

Now, I might be wrong but I believe I was the only vaping consumer to be afforded one of the restricted 30 public places to attend COP7 in India (see report of the day here). I was, of course, then banned from observing further detailed proceedings about vaping along with the press and any other interested parties.

However, I'm already hearing that vapers are so consumed with anger at the way COP7 has treated the subject that the next conference in Geneva in 2018 will be attended by many hundreds more. The FCTC now has a two year period of warning to stop being so lazy and to develop some understanding of the products and the people who make and consume them. Personally I hope they don't, because just following the same idle and mendacious lines as they've done for decades with tobacco is working very well for someone like me who just wants to see their total destruction.

I don't believe I'll be disappointed, either, simply for the fact that the FCTC is not fit for purpose. I will write up the quite ridiculous procedure tomorrow on how COP7 debated vaping for 5 days but ended up with exactly the same ill-researched crap that they had produced in Moscow in 2014. The only teaser I'll give is that it's hardly surprising when you allow third world nations the ability to display their ignorant opinons with the full backing of a UN-backed and unelected global quango Goliath.

Those organising COP8 now have two years to start learning about vaping while the science has another two years to further show up their stupidity. If the FCTC thought this year was a trifle uncomfortable, that will be nothing compared with when hundreds of the vapers  they have insulted this past week - and hopefully unnecessarily-impoverished manfacturers and vendors too - turn up on their doorstep in 2018.

New Delhi will look like a maiden aunt's garden party by comparison. 

A Billion Lives Reaches India

I travelled down to the Ojas Art Gallery last night for the much talked about Indian screening of A Billion Lives, scheduled to coincide with the FCTC's COP7.

For Delhi, it was a rather plush venue, but the journey there was quite incredible. On Tuesday evening, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a shock policy which declared that 500 and 1000 rupee notes (about £6 and £12 respectively) cease to be legal tender in 72 hours; the result here has been chaos. India's economy is overwhelmingly a cash one and - although banks will accept the notes for another 50 days - most people don't have a bank account or even ID and the banks were shut yesterday anyway because they had no new notes to give out. So shops and traders have been refusing to take the notes for fear of being left with obsolete cash, and ATMs have been limited to giving out the equivalent of £24 per day. Tourists have also suffered, I was speaking to an Australian last night whose travel cash is now unwanted by restaurants and bars, most of which don't take cards.

One of the only ways of locals being able to get the notes accepted, then, has been through ticket machines and petrol pumps which are programmed to take them, and there just happened to be three large petrol stations on the route I had to take, all of which had massive queues out onto the road as people scrambled to get something for their soon-to-be redundant money.

Fortunately, one of the Indian vapers I met in the afternoon had warned me that although the journey should take 30 minutes, I should leave an hour, so I got there in time after a 50 minute taxi ride from hell. If you've ever been to India you'll know that the roads are anything but ordered, in fact it is every man for himself; it's not so much traffic as a stampede. Well just add in travelling in rush hour with panicking citizens, in the dark, and you can imagine the experience.

After almost an hour in a chaotic, unordered melee of bumper to bumper, wing to wing travel accompanied by a cacophony of vehicle horns, what a welcoming sight the calm red carpet approach was for the screening.

It was beautifully laid out, with flower petal arrangements on the fringes of the carpet, flickering candles lighting the way, and a big sign saying "INDIA" in case you had forgotten where you were.

This led us up to the venue for the evening, the outdoor cinema specially-built for the screening. It was to be A Billion Lives al fresco which was a trifle irritating since I'd not brought a jacket. Ordinarily that wouldn't be much of a problem in India at this time of year, but what with the sun being blocked out by the smog, there was no warm air around and it was quite chilly at times.

The art centre does have a cinema as I understand it but, according to Director Aaron Biebert, Indian rules mean that a film has to be approved a full 12 weeks beforehand, so a privately-built cinema was the only way to get it shown. Still, it meant that vaping was permitted throughout which made the many vapers in attendance very happy.

After a bit of mingling and a drinks reception with spicy hors d'eouvres (which they all are over here, I'm gagging for a bland burger!), the film screening began in front of an attendance of around 70 by my estimation. Most of whom were local vapers or otherwise interested Indians.

Much to the irritation of many vapers who have only seen trailers, I expect, this is the second time I've seen A Billion Lives and I'm by far it's biggest fan. So I don't need to say much about the film itself because I've already done so; you can read my review from the Warsaw showing here. I had heard that a few edits had been made but I didn't notice them, and I felt I enjoyed the film more on this occasion, but that could have been due to the far more salubrious surroundings this time rather than being hemmed in at a Polish cinema with only one entrance/exit.

It was followed by a Q&A with Director Aaron Biebert and Julian Morris of The Reason Foundation while most attendees listened from the bar at the back of the seating area.

Oh, and that isn't a vape cloud you can see in the picture, by the way, the fog was from a smoke machine you may be able to spot to the left of the screen.

Then, finally, to top off a rather top notch presentation, the post-screening entertainment by Indian song and dance band Rajasthan Josh struck up (see teaser taster below) as guests chatted and networked.

However - much as in life generally - just as everyone was enjoying themselves, the dark cloud of 'public health' interference came in and wrecked it. Because this was the day that the regulations on e-cigs were being debated at COP7 and word had reached us that an unholy alliance of India, Kenya, Thailand and Nigeria were demanding that the WHO recommend a global ban on the manufacture and sale of all vaping devices and liquids.

In fact, at time of writing, the horse trading and negotiations are still going on at the COP7 venue, and a lot of it is quite shocking stuff. Maybe that'll be my next article from India, who knows? Stay tuned. 

A Well-Deserved Award And Meeting Biebert

Last night I travelled down to Le Meridien Hotel here in New Delhi for an auspicious awards ceremony. Well, I say awards in the plural but there was only one; and unlike other awards ceremonies there were no other nominations simply because no other organisation even comes close to the winner in this category.

The award was for "The Least Transparent Organisation in the Galaxy" and was won by ... drum roll please ....The World Health Organisation!

This exquisite trophy - made out of $8 worth of reclaimed Lego from a loose Lego shop in Germany - is described by Students for Liberty, who made the award, as follows.

The Least Transparent Organization of the Galaxy Award is a Bricked-Up Door held up by four pillars – one pillar representing the common good, one for superiority, one causes harm as it prevents harm reduction, and one holds the door firmly shut.

In his pre-award speech, Frederik Cyrus Roede announced that, "sadly, the WHO can't be with us tonight" because "they wouldn't reply to our calls or emails". Standard stuff.

It is well-deserved, especially when you see what the FCTC organisers are doing to journalists at COP7. Watch the film below and be amazed and disgusted at the same time.

Caught on tape by @TheRebelTV: US reporter dragged from #Delhi UN meeting. @FaithGoldy talks to @Drews_Views https://t.co/SCj3ta1LUx #tcot pic.twitter.com/yXFCVFDQ3t

— The Rebel (@TheRebelTV) November 8, 2016

Last night's award ceremony isn't the only event staged by Students for Liberty during COP7, they also protested in the plenary on Monday morning and their Indian members staged a protest in support of tobacco farmers (whose living the FCTC wants to destroy purely based on ignorant ideology) outside the COP7 venue.

This short 2 minute film explains why and gives you more background of what has been going on at COP7.

As mentioned in my last article, I also met A Billion Lives Director Aaron Biebert last night. We had a good hour long chat about David Goerlitz's Indian visa refusal, how the film is being received and on his future plans amongst other things. Oh yeah, and he called me "a legend", which was nice except aren't legends supposed to be dead?

Biebert is, of course, in India for a special screening of his film tonight at the Ojas Art Gallery up the road. He couldn't have timed it better seeing as the FCTC are today debating what they intend to recommend to member states about e-cigs. So why not tweet the latest trailer on the #COP7FCTC hash tag and let the least transparent organisation in the galaxy know about it. 

My Day At #COP7FCTC

Phew! What a long day that was!

So Monday was the day that the WHO's biennial back-slapping jamboree comprising the world's most accomplished miserable tax troughers began. COP7 was to take place at the Expo Mart complex in Noida, about an hour's drive from New Delhi centre.

I travelled with two Indian vapers and a representative of the newly-formed Association of Vapers India to the venue in the worst smog I've seen so far. This is just one of the pictures I took on the way; to be clear, it is not supposed to be in black and white.

The sun was up and is in that shot, not that you'd notice at first glance. After a trip up the expressway with the odour of sulphur blowing out of the car's ventilation system, we arrived at a heavily-guarded convention centre in the middle of absolutely nowhere, equally shrouded in dank mist.

On arrival, there were a dozen or so people hanging around who we'd later find out were Indian tobacco farmers, justifiably concerned about what those inside were threatening to do to their livelihoods. More about them later.

We entered the venue at just before 7:30am and joined the queue to apply for the limited number of public passes for the event at a registration plaza which catered for all different types of attendee ...

... and there we waited - in a stationary queue - for another three and a half hours!

It was quite clear what was happening. Delegates were turning up in regular coachloads, and it didn't matter how late they were, they were seen before anyone in the public queue. We watched as the inept registration system processed people lazily wandering in as late as 10:45, kept them in a queue of their own for a while before issuing them with a photo ID with which they then entered the venue for the joyless day ahead.

Finally, when the hall was emptied of about a thousand people it had seen that morning, the organisers contemptuously decided the public had waited enough and reluctantly accepted our registration forms and gave us a badge ... a full hour after the conference had started.

Now, no matter how paranoid they are about tobacco industry personnel applying for passes - and there were some there, all of whom declared their affiliations on the form as far as I could ascertain - to treat interested observers so shabbily illustrates the utter contempt they have for the public. If the FCTC really doesn't like the idea of allowing observers in to watch their dreary deliberations, they should be more honest about it and not offer the passes in the first place. They didn't seem to care that ordinary members of the public could be kept standing for such a long period of time, instead more interested in inconveniencing a few tobacco company employees who their skewed priorities have declared as the enemy rather than smoking, which they claim to be acting against.

Amongst those being treated so badly were a group of elected Mayors from Brazil, who jabbered entertainingly away in Portuguese before noticing one of the Brazilian delegation wandering through the hall. On seeing this, they surrounded him to make the case for the thousands of tobacco farmers in their constituencies, while he smiled weakly and tried to placate them.

Who knows what he said to them to ease their concerns, but it wouldn't matter one iota because the COP7 conference doesn't give a shit if farmers lose their businesses and die in poverty; the crusade against the tobacco industry is far more important to their neurotic bigotry than the small matter of people earning a living.

Talking of which, by this time word had reached us that the farmers we saw outside had held a brief protest before heading for a building down the road to have a meeting.

Indian farmers represented by FAIFA were joined by farmers from 7 major tobacco growing countries #UndemocraticWHO @PMOIndia @AgriGoI pic.twitter.com/NRXAr5sDIO

— Nikita Das (@nikitadas27) November 7, 2016

They weren't quite far enough away for the elites of the tobacco control industry though, so the police used a new rule that had been implemented the night before - banning more than four people walking together - to tell the farmers they had broken the law and that their meeting was cancelled. They were then told to get back on their buses and leave the area or be arrested. Most did but some were, indeed, arrested.

Indian farmers were peacefully protesting to world community #UndemocraticWHO #cop7 @AgriGoI @TheBrainSticker pic.twitter.com/O8CdPp6U7I

— sri vidya (@Twinklingtitli) November 7, 2016

They were then escorted 40km away and told to go home and not venture back. It was a little after this that it was announced that delegates would come out to address the farmers' concerns ...

@MoHFW_INDIA will meet tobacco farmers in afternoon #COP7FCTC #COP7 outside the venue of conference to discuss their problems pic.twitter.com/CNfpuN6O6Z

— Medical Macaroni (@dawalelo) November 7, 2016

... but they were long evacuated and, d'you know, I think the delegates were well aware of the fact.

Which reminds me, while recording a sweeping shot of the hall, I inadvertently captured the Indian Health Minister thanking the police for not letting anything go wrong at the conference.

Like ensuring objecting farmers are kept miles away, does he mean? Now that's service!

Anyhow, back to your humble host's experience. Eventually, at just vefore 11am, I and others in the public queue managed to receive our passes and entered the venue. Quite impressive it was too.

I sat, with the others in the pen sectioned off for the public, and watched for the best part of two hours; I would like to say I was equally impressed with the speakers, but that would be a lie, I wasn't. What surprised me most was how amateurish and disorganised the whole thing was. It was clear that none of those I saw were good at public speaking, and amongst the mumbling and incoherent newspeak were long pauses while the room waited embarrassingly for something to happen. At one point, the whole thing was stopped while the head of the secretariat had a chat backstage with the Sri Lankan Prime Minister. It was quite surreal.

And as for the subject matter, well it was the same old tired paranoia, sadly.

More than half of the @FCTCofficial conference has been about rules about who can enter the #COP7FCTC. Very Orwellian.

— Yaël (@YaelOss) November 7, 2016

This is very true. A large part of the COP events now seem to be taken up with justifying the FCTC's pathetic obsession with excluding anyone who doesn't agree 100% with their policies. Bizarrely, following this chain of deranged thought, Vera da Costa condemned "those amongst us" who worked for tobacco companies but sullied the public pass system by, erm, applying for one. I must admit to finding her concern for the public rather hollow considering the 300 minute wait her administrators had inflicted on us. But then, I don't think her focus was on the public at all, she - along with everyone else there - are just miffed they have to pretend to be transparent at all! A fact borne out at last knockings on the day as the customary evacuation of the heretics was announced. No public or press allowed for the rest of the week's proceedings, and that included even being in the grounds of the venue!

DESPICABLE: Every country at the WHO anti-tobacco meeting voted unanimously to kick out the press & the public #cop7fctc #UndemocraticWHO

— Drew Johnson (@Drews_Views) November 7, 2016

Not that those present had any intention of making the public feel welcome anyway, there was a camera trained constantly on our area ...

... and every now and then a delegate would come up and take pictures of the public gallery before scuttling off again, presumably to tell all their friends how nasty we were for coming along to watch. The most prominent of these - and the most hilariously surreal moment of the day - was Debs Arnott who darted, weasel-like, around us to take about five swift pictures from a number of different angles. 

She then trotted off to complain - like some pinch-lipped puritan seeing vape in a Polish assembly room - to an anonymous someone by furiously tapping at her phone's keyboard. All very amusing, I have to say.

All in all, a day packed full of the usual COP wince-inducing hilarity, but almost hypnotic despite the incredibly dull and colourless content being presented on stage; I find that observing events at the FCTC's flagship biennial events is one of those things you know you shouldn't do because you won't like what you see, but you can't help yourself ... rather like rubber-necking at a three car pile up.

Sadly - or not as the case may be - I was forced to exit at just before 1pm as my lift was leaving and I didn't fancy getting stranded miles from my hotel or to face getting a pricey cab without sufficient rupees on me. So we set off to sample some Indian street food before heading over to the Royal Connaught Hotel to meet some inspiring Asian vapers.

I'll tell you about that event in the next article because I wouldn't do them the disservice of sticking them on the same page as the lifeless, state-funded, soul-sucking, freedom-hating bog trolls at COP7 an hour up the road. Watch this space.

#COP7FCTC Finds Out What A Real Public Health Crisis Looks Like

If any of you have been following my tweets recently, you'll have gathered that I'm in India to experience the World Health Organisation's COP7 farce first-hand. Well, not exactly first-hand since the conference itself is notoriously known to exclude anyone and everyone who might offer a different slant on proceedings than that preferred by the WHO's junk science-laden FCTC.

Still, COP6 two years ago in Moscow was such a hilarious exercise in incompetence that I made a note then to go to the next one. I thought it might be hard to top that but before the bansturbator beano has even begun, the jokes have already started.

Chain smokers moving to Delhi to save money after hearing that breathing there is like smoking 40 cigarettes

That satirical headline has been prompted by widespread reports of appalling pollution in New Delhi where COP7 is taking place. Apparently, it is the worst the city has seen for 17 years.

According to one advocacy group, government data shows that the smog that enveloped the city midweek was the worst in the last 17 years. The concentration of PM2.5, tiny particulate pollution that can clog lungs, averaged close to 700 micrograms per cubic meter. That’s 12 times the government norm and a whopping 70 times the WHO standards.

The New York Times reports that over 1,800 schools have been closed and offer an apt comparison.

Sustained exposure to that concentration of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day, said Sarath Guttikunda, the director of Urban Emissions, an independent research group.

And delegates should be aware of what this means to their pristine lungs as they arrive for the 5 day misery-fest.

Particulate matters (PM) are tiny particles in the air that cause visibility problems and health hazards. The permissible level of PM 2.5 is 60µg/m³ while PM10 is 100 µg/m³. Levels beyond that can cause harm to the respiratory system as the ultra fine particulates can embed themselves deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream.

Best invest in a mask, FCTC boys and girls.

If you want to know what it looks like, by the way, here's a lovely view of sunrise over Delhi on my flight in. 

To clarify, those aren't clouds we were flying over, because there weren't any, that was on the approach to land and is a thick immovable bank of grime sitting stubbornly over the city. Here's the view from my smokefree (natch) hotel window.

So it seems that anti-smoking obsessives from all over the world - who constantly bark that choosing to smoke, vape or use smokeless tobacco is a health crisis - are walking into a solid gold, proper, bona fide public health crisis which puts their pathetic bleating exaggerations to shame. 

It is in this atmosphere that the FCTC are going to spend hours arguing that smoking in a windy park and entirely harmless vaping in public should be banned. Risible, huh? I spoke to Jeff Stier of Washington's National Centre for Policy Research who is also here, and he commented "The WHO are summoning their tobacco control elites here, and in their minds this smog is about as dangerous as one vape!". Sadly, if you read some of the utter garbage that the FCTC cite in their pre-COP report, he is probably right. 

I had to laugh on seeing the COP7 help desk in the airport arrivals hall, just next to an exit where people were donning masks just to step out into the 'fresh' air or choking if they didn't have one. It kinda puts it all into context, doesn't it?

"Hello Sir, here's your agenda, security pass and gas mask"

There have been numerous articles in the media about this event in recent weeks as the world has started to wake up to the secrecy and paranoia of the FCTC, so there might be quite a few eyes on what goes on this week. It's not the start the tobacco control industry Goliath would have wished for is it?

I'll be here for a while yet and, as someone with grizzled old lungs think I should survive the duration. I will keep you posted. 

#COP7FCTC: The Pre-Beano Manual

With the FCTC's anti-smoker, anti-free speech, anti-decency, anti-democratic, truth-free, ethics-free, integrity-free and thoroughly nasty dictatorship-fawning COP7 beano for hideous prohibitionists beginning on Monday, here's a handy guide from the US-based Taxpayers Protection Alliance as to what to expect in the next week.

I've screened some highlights.

I think they understand the WHO's FCTC very well, don't you?

Crazy Like A #COP7FCTC

As the biennial comedy-fest known as the FCTC's Conference of the Parties approaches (COP7 begins in New Delhi on Monday the 7th), you might like to stick this little nugget in the file marked "you couldn't make this shit up".

You may remember Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva. She is head of the secretariat of the FCTC and the woman who recently praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, a man responsible for thousands of extra-judicial murders in his country since May and who has said he would "happily slaughter 3 million drug addicts". In fact, he even has a wish list of those he wants killed and has boasted that we should expect tens of thousands more.

Congrats Philippines @FCTCofficial @ImPresDuterte Smoke-free Philippines awaits Duterte signature https://t.co/z8zytFsrIy via @sharethis

— Vera daCosta e Silva (@vera_dacosta) October 10, 2016

So who better, then, to talk about her commitment to ... erm ... human rights, eh?

Human rights experts hear from the Head of the Convention Secretariat

Human rights experts meeting at the Palais des Nations in Geneva heard how the global tobacco control treaty is increasingly relevant to advances in public health and human rights.  

The United Nations Human Rights Council’s Second Session of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group (OEIGWG) on transnational corporations (TNCs) and other business enterprises with respect to human rights heard from Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, Head of the Convention Secretariat, to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).

Yes, you really did just read that.

It gets more bizarre the further down you read.

The basis of the WHO FCTC is to assert the individual’s right to protection from powerful organizations which, left unchallenged, will knowingly cause harm.

The FCTC is a powerful organisation which will be doing its level best next week to encourage bans on e-cigs and vaping despite being quite aware of their harm reduction potential (for background on the FCTC's appalling pre-COP7 report on vaping products and a devastating critique of it, do go read here).

You could arguably say that could "knowingly cause harm", yes?

The importance of human rights is foundational to the WHO FCTC.

Apart from if you're talking about the murder of thousands of drug users in the Philippines without trial and without even an attempt at establishing credible evidence of guilt, in which case Vera and the FCTC are very happy to turn a blind eye.

Parties to the WHO FCTC acknowledge the individual’s right to the highest attainable standard of health ...

Presumably, "the highest attainable standard of health" involves actually being alive instead of being gunned down in the street by death squads paid by governments such as, oh let me think, the one run by FCTC darling Rodrigo Duterte.

Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva suggested the intergovernmental working group to consider cleansing the public policy arena of corporations whose actions or products threaten human rights.

But deranged blood-thirsty dictators are quite welcome to join the party and will be fully encouraged.

Two years ago COP6 delivered some top drawer moon-howling craziness, but strap yourselves in because already COP7 is promising to excel even the FCTC's own high standards of insanity.

We're Staying Alive, You .... Maybe Not So Much

A quick update on Monday's article.

Y'see, Dr Vera da Costa e Silva - head of the secretariat of the World Health Organisation’s FCTC - posted this incredible tweet congratulating the Philippines and their genocidal President Ricardo Duterte who has encouraged the murder of thousands of people and boasted that he wants to "slaughter" 3 million.

Congrats Philippines @FCTCofficial @ImPresDuterte Smoke-free Philippines awaits Duterte signature https://t.co/z8zytFsrIy via @sharethis

— Vera daCosta e Silva (@vera_dacosta) October 10, 2016

The very next day, the World Health Organisation's Western Pacific arm - the area which includes the Philippines - were dancing to ... Staying Alive!

Think meetings are boring?Not at @WHOWPRO 67th regional mtg. Here’s what took place after lunch Monday #sittingnewsmoking @devex @WHO pic.twitter.com/7mftfGrzIS

— Jenny Lei Ravelo (@JennyLeiRavelo) October 11, 2016

Seriously, try to make something up as bizarre as that, I dare you.

Now, I thought the WHO was a pretty deranged and politically moronic organisation in 2014 when it decided not to cancel COP6 in Moscow after Russia had just shot down a passenger plane carrying 298 innocent individuals, amongst whom were "dozens" of medical professionals on their way to an International Aids conference, and which included one of their own World Health Organisation media officers.

In fact, not only did they not cancel it, the Director General Margaret Chan then held a photo opp and supped from the same samovar as Russia's leader to thank him for his, erm, trouble.

But dancing to Staying Alive the day after one of their senior spokespeople has praised a political leader who is happy that, daily, bodies of healthy people increasingly litter the streets of a country within their jurisdiction is truly jaw-dropping.

They may as well walk up to the grief-stricken families of the Philippines dead and slap them in the face. These rancid tax-draining animals have absolutely no shame whatsoever, do they?

Prior to #COP7FCTC, The WHO Plumbs New Depths

Not content with telling Syrians that the most important thing to worry about right now - over and above being one of the hundreds of thousands killed by barrel bombs or brutally executed by ISIS - is how to best quit smoking, the WHO's FCTC have found a way to disgust us even more.

Congrats Philippines @FCTCofficial @ImPresDuterte Smoke-free Philippines awaits Duterte signature https://t.co/z8zytFsrIy via @sharethis

— Vera daCosta e Silva (@vera_dacosta) October 10, 2016

The excitement Dr Vera da Costa e Silva - head of the secretariat of the WHO’s FCTC - is enjoying at this great news almost leaps off the page, doesn't it? He's such a nice man, that Duterte, he's one of the FCTC in-crowd and no mistake.

If you're not familiar with President Duterte, here's a quick primer. He is the President of The Philipines and has told his people that it is perfectly acceptable to just, you know, pop out onto the street and kill drug users. No evidence needed, no arrest, no trial, no courts; just see someone you don't like, slaughter them in cold blood, wrap their head in gaffer tape and say he was a druggie. The authorities won't bother you, in fact you'll be celebrated or even salaried.

He has said that he would happily "slaughter" 3 million drug addicts and is proud to compare himself to Hitler ... and da Costa is likewise very proud to be associated with him too, as her tweet shows.

The Inquirer has set up a regularly updated 'kill list' in an attempt to document the misery and carnage this disgusting dictator has wrought on his country, it's an imprecise science but at time of writing his policy has resulted in over 2,500 extra-judicial killings, with corpses just left on the street. Yet da Costa thinks he's just a regular decent guy.

Now, I've written before about how the FCTC does very much love a dictatorship so, including countries like Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan which boast shameful human rights records; today Guido published a picture of FCTC delegates all smiles on a Maldives beach treating delegates from North Korea and Burma amongst others; and the last major conference (COP6) of this group of extremist ghouls was held in Moscow, where Margaret Chan - Director General of the WHO - chose to simper over Putin just after Russia had blown a packed passenger plane out of the sky killing 298 innocent people instead of being at a summit to discuss tackling the scourge of Ebola in Africa.

DG of the WHO Margaret Chan, all of a flutter in Moscow 2014

As an offshoot of the United Nations, you'd think da Costa, Chan and all the other repellent hangers-on to this anti-smoking cult might be a bit embarrassed about being in cahoots with some of the most brutal and murderous people on the planet. After all, the UN carries a commitment to the protection of human rights and and aspiration to improving living conditions throughout the world in its principle goals.

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and religion; and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

How fawning over leaders who shoot planes of holidaymakers out of the sky, and murder many thousands of their own citizens without trial while comparing themselves to Hitler fits in with that motto is anyone's guess.

Still, it's nearly time for COP7 where these vile human beings will be trotting down to New Delhi to shower praise on India for its efforts in jailing vapers for the hideous crime of quitting smoking ... something the FCTC is supposed to be in favour of.

After reading the above, you'd think the UK would have nothing to do with such a revolting, corrupt and morally-bankrupt collection of utter bastards, wouldn't you? Well you'd be wrong. The Department of Health's Andrew Black will be there glad-handing these repulsive people, as will Deborah Arnott of ASH. And you're paying them to do so.

Doesn't that turn your stomach? I really don't know how such foul and sickening people sleep at night.

UPDATE: Fergus has had his say on this too.

When an organisation that’s supposed to be promoting health becomes so corrupted by prohibitionist zealots that it’s willing to endorse a madman who massacres his own citizens in the streets, it is no longer fit to exist. The WHO’s senior staff need to be swept away and replaced by sane adults. And until people like the odious da Costa are gone, no civilised government or organisation should have anything to do with the FCTC. Tobacco control fanatics are now so extreme that they’re openly allying themselves with Hitlerian criminals like Kim and Duterte. It’s time for the world to stand up and stop the bastards.

Do go have a read.