The global tobacco-control community is outraged, as New Zealand — long regarded as one of the world’s most innovative and effective leaders in reducing smoking — was handed the “Dirty Ashtray” award at COP11 in Geneva. Traditionally used to highlight countries deemed obstructive or regressive in tobacco control, the award is a clear illustration of the deeper ideological fractures running through the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) process. More importantly for harm-reduction advocates, the incident has become a stark example of how the FCTC choses to remain ignorant, sidelining measurable outcomes in favour of dogmatic positions on nicotine.
The attempt to dishonour New Zealand was underscored by the award citation itself, which pointed to the country’s rollback of several widely praised measures introduced after COP10. According to the statement, the reversals have weakened progress toward Indigenous tobacco-free goals, coincided with rising youth vaping, and contributed to the country’s dramatic plunge—from second place to 53rd—in the Tobacco Industry Interference Index, a scoring system of course based on the FCTC. The report alleged that these reversals are already being used by pro-tobacco actors worldwide to justify resistance to public-health protections.
The backlash from academics and public-health experts was immediate. Professor Janet Hoek of the ASPIRE Aotearoa Research Centre described the award as a moment of “national shame,” arguing that New Zealand’s sudden erosion of tobacco-control leadership is now visible on the world stage. While Dr Mary Assunta, lead author of the Index, voiced the same concerns, saying that the repealed measures would likely have produced “large, rapid and equitable declines in smoking prevalence,” while the reversal risks slowing progress and emboldening global industry actors who benefit from regulatory backtracking.
When science loses
New Zealand’s delegation arrived in Geneva with data demonstrating one of the world’s fastest declines in smoking. Daily smoking has fallen to just 6.8 percent — among the lowest rates ever recorded nationally — and officials attribute much of this progress to carefully regulated access to vaping products. Vaping has been particularly impactful among Māori and Pacific populations, where generational inequities in smoking-related disease remain profound. Research by Emeritus Professor Ruth Bonita notes that smoking still accounts for nearly a third of the life-expectancy gap between Māori and non-Māori. For these communities, accessible, affordable, and safe vaping products are not a luxury, but an essential harm-reduction tool.
Despite this, New Zealand was condemned not for failing to reduce smoking, but for permitting safer nicotine alternatives. This contradiction especially sticks out when contrasted with Mexico’s reception of the “Orchid Award,” despite its smoking rates remaining roughly double those of New Zealand. For many observers, this contrast crystallised a long-standing concern: that certain global NGOs reward political compliance over measurable health outcomes.
Vaping, politics, and power
This tension reflects a broader fracture within international tobacco control. Across Europe for instance, policymakers are divided. Some governments, like Germany, have pursued punitive approaches to vaping, snus, and nicotine pouches — often resulting in high smoking rates that remain stubbornly unchanged. Others, such as Sweden and Norway, have leaned into harm-reduction models that differentiate between combustible and non-combustible nicotine. Sweden’s near-elimination of smoking, achieved largely through widespread use of snus, is now one of the clearest demonstrations of how alternative nicotine products can reshape public health for the better.
The split is exacerbated by procedural constraints within the FCTC itself. Many harm-reduction advocates were again excluded from attending COP11, despite representing consumer groups and independent researchers with no ties to the tobacco industry. CAPHRA, WVA, and similar organisations argue that the FCTC’s blanket exclusion of all non-government stakeholders, even those with lived experience or scientific expertise, has created an environment where well-funded NGOs dominate the debate while alternative perspectives are systematically sidelined.
Rewarding failure, punishing progress
CAPHRA’s executive coordinator, Nancy Loucas, described the New Zealand decision as “ideological obstruction rather than public-health advocacy.” She urged New Zealand to push back formally at COP11, arguing that the FCTC must become more transparent, accountable, and evidence-driven if it hopes to retain global legitimacy. According to Loucas, dismissing a country achieving world-leading declines in smoking because it allows regulated vaping “undermines the credibility of global tobacco-control leadership.”
This moment matters because it speaks to the heart of the global challenge. Tobacco still kills nearly eight million people annually, and while cigarette smoking continues to fall in many regions, combustible tobacco remains overwhelmingly responsible for death and disease. While safer nicotine alternatives, whether vapes, heated tobacco, pouches, or snus, have consistently been shown to accelerate declines in smoking. When countries embrace these alternatives within strong regulatory frameworks, smoking drops faster. When they ban them, smoking rates decline slowly or not at all.
New Zealand’s experience underscores this reality. Its rapid fall in smoking coincided not with prohibition, but with tightly regulated access to vaping. Yet instead of being celebrated, the country finds itself chastised by organisations that view any form of nicotine use — regardless of relative risk — as unacceptable.
The dangerous ideological status quo exposed at COP11
The controversy surrounding the Dirty Ashtray award reveals a fundamental tension that the global tobacco-control movement can no longer ignore. Should public health focus on eliminating all nicotine use, or on eliminating the harms caused overwhelmingly by combustion? Countries that choose the latter are saving more lives, faster. Countries that choose the former are increasingly struggling to keep up.
As COP11-related debates continue, the world has a choice to make. It can cling to ideological resistance that punishes successful harm-reduction models, or it can embrace a future where innovation, science, and lived experience guide policy. For millions of smokers looking for a way out, the consequences of that choice could not be more significant.
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