With COP10 due to take place next week, and with consumers denied a seat at the table, Lindsey Stroud walked us through how consumers are making their voice heard at the Good COP / Bad COP event, which will be livestreamed from COP10 in Panama!
Webpage of Good COP
Good COP livestream
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro with Joanna Junak 2:28 - Good COP / Bad COP EXPLAINED 4:24 - What's happening in Panama? 7:06 - Big names in THR at Good COP / Bad COP! 9:37 - Where to watch Good COP / Bad COP!Transcription:
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Joanna Junak: Lindsay Stroud, Senior Fellow of Taxpayers Protection Alliance, who will be present at COP10 in Panama, will share her thoughts about her plans for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance - Good COP event.
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Lindsay Stroud: Conference of the peopl - Good COP Bad COP. Taxpayers Protection Alliance is hosting an event that's pretty much been a brainchild baby of our president, David Williams, the president of the TPA. He lost his dad to smoking. He has always been active in promoting alternatives to cigarettes. And he always wonders, it's really sad to see older people, they always wonder too, what would have happened to your loved ones if these alternatives would have been available, would they have been able to quit smoking? So when I started TPA back in 2021, and that was with COP9, and they did it virtually, but my boss kind of had it like, I want to do a good COP. And so that's what we're doing. It's a good COP. It's a conference of the people. Though we're based in the United States and we're not members of the FCTC, we still are involved with the WHO and we're still under the guidance of the empower policies that don't really get to the root of why people who use tobacco products first even get started on using these products but also why they continue to use them i do think that we've got enough public health campaigns that most adults do find - cigarettes are bad for you, but it still doesn't stop them from lighting up. And doing research into the WHO for the past, the FCTC for the past couple of years has been just really alarming on this lack of inclusion, this complete disdain for towards so-called big tobacco. It's like anything that they, God forbid they do anything because everything that they do is terrible, even though It's actually kind of amazing that it was when you look at vaping, it was a consumer led revolution that actually forced these big tobacco companies to change their products. Even the government, even the FCTC couldn't get that going. So with that, we are hosting, as everybody knows. The COP10 was supposed to take place in November last year, but the WHO kind of had a kerfunkle on that. And we were all set to go. We had a bunch of experts from all over the world, and then we had to cancel or postpone our Good COP. So this year we are doing our Good COP. It's taking place February 5th through the 9th. It's going to be in panama central hotel but i know it is limited access so if you guys are trying to like you know stomp down the doors i don't know if you'll be able to actually get in but everything will be live streamed and what it is it is We've got experts from over 14 different countries. There's over two dozen experts, and they all represent the science, the consumers, and the policy folks who are working both on tobacco and also tobacco harm reduction policy, mostly tobacco harm reduction policy. We don't have any people who use cigarettes actually going to be at a consumer level coming to our event. And it's mostly to offer an opportunity for all of these experts, and to say the things that they would want to say to the WHO if they were actually allowed and the FCTC's conference of the parties, you can follow me on Twitter i know that it's kind of amazing like all the so-called journalists that have been able to get credentials to be able to participate and go into the convention center are all Bloomberg-funded. And other journalists I know I've talked to have been denied their credentials. So our whole mantra is to be as transparent as possible and hoping that some delegates will actually watch what we are saying because they're definitely not going to be getting any of that from inside the WHO. I mean, we just saw (Kretsch) It's actually kind of... We got more fodder this time around because (Kretsch) came out and was really terrible a couple weeks ago about e-cigarettes and under the impression that, you know, it's just... trying to hook kids so it's going to be exciting it's going to we've got sessions and panels. It's going to be live streaming on the opening day. It's going to be, we'll start at 9 am Eastern time. That's the local time zone in Panama. And we're going to have like an opening session kind of explaining why we're doing this. So David will actually talk more about his story. And then we're going to close it down and hopefully we're still trying to figure out how we're going to do, because the opening plenary session should be available to the public. And then following that, we'll have introductions with all of our experts so people can kind of get to know who's there, why they got involved with THR. And then from Tuesday through Friday, we've got sessions and panels. We've got dedicated sessions too, based off of where our policy experts are, where our experts are coming from, whether they're in policy science or consumer representatives, and just discussing a lot of things. I know I'm like putting together a lot of this program on the fly, and that's what we kind of want to do because of what's coming out of COP. We want to be actually responding to the limited data that we'll be getting from it. But it's also just looking at, you know, how did we get here? What is the problem? You know, we'll cover the tobacco problem and also the history of the FCTC. Why was this needed? How were they able to convince all these countries to send money to the WHO every year, especially countries that you see smoking rates increase? Looking at you, Mexico. And then look at, well, what is tobacco harm reduction? How did this come about? And then kind of looking at the future, it's quite frustrating that the UN government bodies are actually kind of impeding innovation and technology and, like, safer technology. I know I've been tweeting already this morning. I'm a little bit crazy. But I know, like, they sent out, like, a media press kit yesterday. I guess one of the focus that COP's going to be is, like, the environment. Well, you already have a different COP for the environment, and you just did it last year and in a big oil country. You know, wait. Big oil is allowed to be there, too. And, like, and I get that you understand that, like, you know, combustion is bad for the environment. Why don't you think about combustion in the ways for, you know, adults who smoke in their lungs? The complete disregard for harm reduction. So... It's going to be an exciting event. It's the first time we've done anything like this, so please be nice to us. We're not conference planners. I'm more of a data hound myself, okay? So I've got a new appreciation for GFN, especially with herding everybody around, but I'm really excited for it. I think that we're going to get a lot of really good content. We've got amazing people in the science realm we've got dr Riccardo Polosa from Italy, dr Constantinos Farsalinos from Greece, we've got dr Rohan and i can't pronounce his last name from India, we also got Roberto Sussman, we've got Carmen Escrig with the real data doctors, Dr. Verastro and also Dr. Randall Rodriguez as our science portion. For consumers, we are all over the board. We've got Maria Papaioannou Again, if I pronounce your name wrong, I'm really sorry about that. From Canada for Rights for Vapors. We've got Jeffrey Zamora, who is crazy like me and is involved with everything from Costa Rica. We got Thomas O'Gorman from Mexico. We and a whole handful. Kurt Yeo is coming out as a consumer. Will Godfrey at Filter is going to be one of our experts. And then we also have a lot of policy people. We've got Conor Malloy from the Taxpayers Alliance out of New Zealand. And that'll be kind of interesting because now it looks like after what the UK did that New Zealand might be now our Mecca when it comes to vaping policy. We've got Tim Andrews that has been working on this stuff in several countries. And he's now with Americans for tax reform. Grant Carlson with the National Taxpayers Union. We have a tax foundation person there. And if you're following, they're probably one of the best people I'm looking at the effects and just knowing the numbers on excise tax policy, at least here in the US. So it's going to be an interesting mix of people. I do have a personal goal to get some of these experts kind of like arguing with each other, to highlight that you know even in the harm reduction space we have disagreements but we can still come to a consensus because at the end of the day we really just care about the truth. From a personal point for me, it's always been adults should have access to the information, especially adults who smoke, knowing that there are products that are safer. And then also having access to those products, you know, is key, I think, in reducing smoking rates. So there'll be a lot of frustration, I'm sure, on my end, especially as things go along. We're just hoping that a lot of delegates actually don't show up to the bad cop so they can't really vote on anything. It will be live streamed on our YouTube page. If you go to YouTube and look for Taxpayers Protection Alliance, you'll be able to get that. And I'll give you the link to to send over. And we're also doing a each day. If you can, if people want to sign up, we're going to be sending out an email blast with the Daily Digest that will kind of have a recap of what we did that day. A featured expert from that day and a quote and everything. So but just make sure that you're watching the live stream. And hopefully I don't know exactly how we're doing Q&A yet. But hopefully, if you've got questions, definitely drop them in there. If we don't get to it on that panel a lot, check out our agenda. You'll see, if you've got a favorite, consumer advocate, you can pencil out those times so we can definitely bring that up during their panel discussion. We've got a question from blah, blah, blah and stuff. So, yeah, I know I'll be unlike the unlike Bad COP. All of our COP will be public and available to everybody.