What I Saw at the FCTC COP11 on Tobacco Control

Inside, But Locked Out: A Report from the GoodCOP 2.0 “Conference of the People”

Maria Papaioannoy is a leading Canadian consumer advocate for safer nicotine products and the founder of Rights4Vapers. A former smoker who transitioned through vaping, she channels lived experience into national advocacy, policy engagement, and public education. Maria has spoken internationally on harm reduction, including as an expert at GoodCOP 1 and 2, a featured speaker at the 2025 Canada Strong and Free Convention, and a keynote presenter at GFN 2025. Follow her on X @papaioannoy

Source: Maria Papaioannoy

I was in Geneva for the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’s Conference of the Parties (FCTC COP11). Not inside the official meetings, but across the street at Good COP 2.0, the “Conference of the People.” It was my second time; my first was in Panama in 2024, where I showed up naïve, wide-eyed, and with only the faintest idea of how the FCTC operated. The learning curve since then has been brutal.

As a Canadian, I grew up believing in transparent government, open debate, and democratic accountability. Secretive, closed-door policymaking was something from fiction, not public health. For 51 years, I had no reference point for global health decisions being made in near-total secrecy.

What the FCTC Learnt from Scientology

My closest comparison came from a brief obsession in 2015 with Scientology books and documentaries. And to my surprise, after attending two Good COPs and watching how the FCTC behaves, the rituals, the information control, the hostility toward outside scrutiny, the comparison stopped feeling dramatic. The rigid, closed-door FCTC culture carries the same unsettling energy: hierarchies, gatekeeping, rehearsed scripts, and an unshakeable belief in its own infallibility, even when evidence contradicts it.

The deeper I stepped into this world, the clearer it became that what happens inside FCTC meetings has little to do with open science or public accountability. Instead, the institution functions like a belief-driven system. Locked doors. Restricted access. Pre-scripted narratives. Demonization of dissent. It was all there. These meetings set global tobacco policy for billions of people, yet anyone who dares question the “company plan” is shamed, silenced, or accused of serving “industry.” I even saw delegates mocked online as “merchants of death” simply for supporting harm reduction for their own sovereign states.

Hired Guns

The World Health Organization wasn’t doing the naming and shaming directly. That job was outsourced to a smaller, but far more aggressive, entity: the Global Alliance for Tobacco Control (GATC).

GATC has become the enforcement arm of the FCTC. No group names, shames, and pressures countries more aggressively. Formerly the FCA, they didn’t just rebrand—they repositioned themselves. They now operate out of Canada under the supervision of HealthBridge, a long-standing charity partly funded by Michael Bloomberg’s network to push anti-vaping policies abroad, including a vaping ban in Vietnam.

With GATC rooted in Canada, this stopped being theoretical. It became personal. And suddenly everything made sense. Because the behaviour of the FCTC, GATC, and even the WHO no longer suggests a mission to reduce smoking. Their decisions point toward something far more troubling: blocking people from quitting using safer nicotine products. After 20 years, their approach is failing, yet they continue to double down.

The atmosphere at FCTC COP11 reinforces this. The secrecy. The scripted language. The hostility toward any evidence that challenges their narrative. The FCTC doesn’t operate like a policy body; it behaves like a belief system. A cult. Question the orthodoxy and GATC will publicly shame you. Approved voices repeat the same talking points, dissenters disappear, and inconvenient science is treated like forbidden material.

And the thing they fear most? Smokers quitting with safer nicotine alternatives.

Has Anti-Nicotine Become Pro-Tobacco?

Hundreds of millions of Bloomberg dollars have been poured into scaring people away from the very products that could help them stop smoking. That’s what I cannot understand: why fight the tools that reduce smoking? Nothing terrifies them more than the words “safer nicotine products” or “tobacco harm reduction”. Instead of engaging with evidence, they label any critic as “industry”—meaning Big Tobacco—even when that makes no sense.

Let’s apply basic logic. If vaping, pouches, or snus help people quit, that hurts the tobacco industry. So who benefits from blocking these alternatives? The proposals pushed at COP11 keep people smoking. More alternatives mean fewer smokers. More choice means less disease. It really is that simple.

That leads to the question no one inside COP11 wants asked: Why has there never been a proposal to ban smoking itself, yet endless attempts to restrict safer nicotine? And if these policies keep people smoking, we must confront an uncomfortable possibility: Is Michael Bloomberg unintentionally protecting the tobacco industry?

Shifting the Issue to Nicotine

If you’re Canadian, pay attention. Ever since COP10, I’ve had a gut feeling that the FCTC, via their muscle, GATC—has been using Canada as a beta-testing ground. After COP11, that’s no longer a suspicion; it’s a pattern.

This year, the FCTC and GATC aggressively pushed to shift global language from tobacco control to nicotine control, something that tobacco control zealots in Canada started doing in late 2024. Then came British Columbia’s Attorney General, Niki Sharma, with Bill 24 (a piece of legislation that reads like it was written straight from the GATC/FCTC playbook) to give the government the power to sue for possible future vaping illness. This bill targets independent vaping businesses. Then Quebec and the Canadian Cancer Society launched a horror-movie-themed anti-nicotine campaign, which I can only assume would cost both the taxpayers of Quebec and the Canadian Cancer society close to a million dollars This isn’t coincidence. It’s coordination. And it’s only beginning.

Because GATC operates here, the narratives crafted in Geneva aren’t abstract, they are here in Canada tested for the world. Decisions made behind closed doors at the FCTC COPs are already shaping provincial legislation and influencing public health priorities without debate or transparency.

We Deserve Better

Canadians deserve better. They deserve open policymaking. Evidence-based decisions, not ideology. And dignity for their lived experience, especially when that experience includes quitting smoking through safer nicotine products, something these institutions refuse to acknowledge.

Safer nicotine products saved my life. They’ve saved millions more. Their stories cannot be erased, not by secrecy, not by gatekeeping, and not by organizations claiming to represent public health while shutting the public out.

I made myself a promise:

• If they refuse to open the doors, we will open the conversation;

• If they silence us inside, we will speak louder outside; and

• If they deny harm reduction, we will amplify the lived experiences they are trying so hard to bury.

This is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a louder, stronger movement for consumers, advocates, and anyone fighting for a world where people are empowered, not forbidden, to choose safer alternatives.