By Timothy S. Donahue

Top Takeaways:

• Two treaties, two approaches: Universal’s Ben Dessart contrasted the tobacco treaty’s restrictions on industry engagement with the climate convention’s broader stakeholder participation.
• Questioning the results: Dessart presented a Universal analysis that he said found virtually no relationship between FCTC implementation levels and declines in tobacco use across 48 European countries.
• Seat at the table: He argued that industry, farmers, retailers, and consumers should be involved in policymaking, but said industry must earn that role through transparency and intellectual honesty.

Ben Dessart has seen two COPs. He likes the way one of them works much better.

Dessart, vice president of external affairs at Universal Corporation, used his keynote address at the Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (GTNF) to contrast what he described as two fundamentally different approaches to industry participation under the United Nations climate convention and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

His argument was straightforward: policymaking works better when those affected by it have a chance to participate. “Due process is the simple yet fundamental principle that rules should not be arbitrarily imposed, and that those expected to be affected by such rules should have a voice in the process,” Dessart said. “By doing so, governments improve decision making, build legitimacy, and enable the durability of their regulations.”

Dessart said the difference between the two international treaties can be partly traced to their founding language. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in 1992, calls for public participation in addressing climate change and its effects under Article 6. The WHO FCTC, adopted in 2003, takes a different approach under Article 5.3, which requires parties to protect tobacco-control policies “from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.”

Dessart argued that the problem is not necessarily Article 5.3 itself but how broadly it has been interpreted. “An extreme interpretation of Article 5.3 has led to a cascading effect at the Conference of the Parties (COP),” he said.

Dessart cited restrictions on industry-connected observers, declarations of interest, and limited access to portions of FCTC COP proceedings as examples of what he views as an increasingly closed process. The FCTC requires observer organizations to disclose industry relationships, and COP11 considered and adopted decisions on observer accreditation and Article 5.3-related issues.

Dessart said the result was what he called a “self-imposed echo chamber.”

“If the language of the treaty is being interpreted in such a way that officials in their capacity of representing nations in an international public health forum are considered to be violating Article 5.3 because they made an effort to better understand the industry and the products they are tasked with regulating, that’s when we have a problem,” he said.

Climate COP offers another model

Dessart contrasted that approach with the climate convention, in which governments, businesses, and other stakeholders participate extensively alongside formal negotiations. He cited COP28 in Dubai as an unusually stark example. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who served as COP28 president, was also CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods attended the summit as well.

“Is industry going to solve climate change on its own? No,” Dessart said. “But with their expertise on both the production side and the molecule side, they can make a meaningful contribution to achieving net zero, as well as to the global conversation.”

The contrast, he argued, shows that involving an industry in discussions does not require regulators to surrender their independence to the industry. “The leadership of the Climate COP has clearly recognized the value of this approach,” Dessart said.

Dessart then shifted from process to outcomes, presenting an analysis for his presentation comparing FCTC implementation with changes in tobacco use. The analysis compared FCTC implementation levels across 48 European countries with changes in overall tobacco use from 2000 to 2025. Dessart said implementation data came from the scientific journal Tobacco Induced Diseases, and tobacco-use figures from WHO.

According to Dessart, the regression indicated that the FCTC implementation measure in the model explained about 2% of the variation in tobacco-use declines across the countries examined. He said the relationship was not statistically significant, with a p-value of 0.32. “The results are striking, not because it shows a correlation, but because it doesn’t,” Dessart said.

That finding should be treated as Universal’s analysis presented at GTNF, rather than as evidence that the FCTC itself has been proved ineffective. A simple cross-country regression cannot establish whether the treaty caused changes in tobacco use, and differences among countries can be influenced by numerous factors not described in Dessart’s presentation.

Dessart nevertheless argued that the results should prompt questions about the FCTC’s policy approach. He highlighted the United States, which has signed but not ratified the FCTC and is therefore not a party to the convention. Dessart said U.S. tobacco use declined 23.4% between 2000 and 2025, while larger declines in the European countries in his comparison occurred in the United Kingdom, Austria, Sweden and Norway.

“Clearly, there is something working in the United States that is missing at the FCTC,” Dessart said.

He also cited the United Kingdom and Sweden as European countries that have incorporated harm-reduction approaches into their tobacco policies. For Dessart, however, his keynote ultimately came back to participation rather than to statistics. “If we want to be part of the solution, we have to be part of the conversation,” he said.

He added that the invitation comes with responsibility. “When governments and international bodies do seek our input, it is our responsibility to show up to provide our expertise, our data, and our real-world on-the-ground perspective,” Dessart said. “But we must be more than a partner. We must be a trusted partner.”

For the tobacco and nicotine industry, he said, that means being “transparent, consistent, and intellectually honest in everything we do.”

Dessart closed by arguing that the industry should continue to push for greater transparency and collaboration within the FCTC process. “Progress doesn’t come from standing on the sidelines,” he said. “It comes from engagement, transparency, and a willingness to work together to achieve better outcomes.”