I didn’t see that coming. Or perhaps I did.
Launched in 2017 in a blaze of publicity, it was reported yesterday (by Reuters no less) that the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World has cut all ties with the nicotine industry.
All ties?
To the best of my knowledge there was only one significant tie, and that was with the global tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI) whose tireless (and often tedious) advocacy for a smoke-free world somehow convinced the company to commit $1bn to fund the Foundation over a twelve year period.
That’s right. One billion dollars.
Now, just six years on, we’re told the Foundation will ‘rebrand and find new funders from outside of the industry'.
To which I can only say, good luck with that!!
But, first, let's rewind to September 2017.
As a participant at the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum in New York, I had a ringside seat when the Foundation was launched, noting:
While delegates were still bleary-eyed from the previous night's 'Welcome Reception' at the Rockefeller Center, the Financial Times (five hours ahead of us) was reporting that Philip Morris International had pledged to give $1 billion to a new organisation called – wait for it – the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.
The money will be donated over twelve years - $83 million annually.
Head of the foundation is former WHO official Derek Yach who helped create the global Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and is now a leading advocate of e-cigarettes.
Yach and PMI's Marc Firestone both addressed the conference so you couldn’t fault the impressive stage-management.
I was never convinced, though, that the Foundation had a long or successful future because the relationship with PMI was always going to be an albatross around its neck, and so it proved.
In March 2018 Yach, a South African, was even refused entry to the 17th World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Cape Town, and that, you could argue, set the tone for an organisation that from day one was ostracised by the global public health community.
Then came the Foundation’s Smoke-Free Index (later rebranded the Tobacco Transformation Index), a vainglorious exercise designed to monitor the tobacco industry’s progress towards a ‘smoke-free’ world.
Writing about it in September 2018, I mused:
I do wonder what PMI’s competitors think of the company funding a body that intends to hold their feet to the fire, forever monitoring their activities in the name of some ‘smoke-free’ utopia.
For example, if their public statements are anything to go by, senior PMI executives clearly think their company is leading the race towards a ‘better’, smoke-free future.
They boast that they are disrupting not just the industry but their own company.
But what happens if and when PMI lags behind some of its rivals? (Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words.) Will the Foundation’s Smoke-Free Index point the finger at the company that is bankrolling it?
Thereafter, one thing that struck me about the Foundation was the seemingly high turnover of staff.
And then, in 2021, Derek Yach himself was gone and I don’t believe the Foundation has ever fully recovered from his unexplained departure.
His eventual successor (it took the Foundation two years to appoint a permanent one) has presumably been tasked with giving the Foundation the leadership and direction it desperately needs, and a final grant of $122.5m from PMI should tide them over for a bit.
It may even pay for a rebrand, although it will take a lot more than a new name and logo to get this particular show back on the road.
The frustrating thing is that the Foundation will almost certainly be remembered as a lost opportunity. The former director of ASH, Clive Bates, hinted as much when he tweeted, in February 2020:
Idea: somehow find a billion dollar foundation to set up a system to meticulously track and challenge the false and misleading statements of WHO, CDC, Bloomberg-funded proxies, and call out the junk science and press releases of influential academics and medical society chancers.
I commented on Clive’s tweet here (Wanted: billion dollar foundation to challenge global health industry’s lies), noting, as I’m sure he intended:
There already exists a ‘billion dollar foundation’ that could do the work outlined by Clive … It’s called the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World and it was launched in New York in September 2017.
That said, I’m sure the Foundation has done some good work. For example, Prof Marewa Glover, a New Zealand-based tobacco control campaigner and someone I greatly respect, yesterday tweeted:
Like many others my research centre has been able to move forward with several research initiatives thanks to the support of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.
Nevertheless it amuses me that Forest, founded in 1979, has survived for almost 45 years on a fraction of the money the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World has been given by PMI in just six years.
Even if it didn’t reach a billion dollars it was still a significant sum, even for a global tobacco giant, but value for money? Arguably not.
Where the Foundation’s next big grant comes from is hard to predict but, thankfully, that’s not my problem.
So apologies for the schadenfreude, but if this is the beginning of the end for a fabulously funded initiative dedicated to achieving a smoke-free world, you’ll forgive me a wry smile.
Below: Yours truly with Derek Yach, founder and president of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, on Euronews in June 2021