The WHO’s misleading claims are fueling dangerous misconceptions about nicotine and safer alternatives to smoking. From misinformation about EVALI and popcorn lung to claims about nicotine causing cancer, these false narratives can have real consequences — even pushing people back towards smoking. What does the scientific evidence actually say, and who pays the price when public health messaging ignores it?
Transcription:
GFN Extra — Tim Andrews on the WHO
Global Forum on Nicotine 2026
Brent Stafford 0:00:00
It's quite amazing. We often use a series of WHO tweets from 2020 during, you know, right at the start of COVID. When you think that the WHO would be concerned about making sure that their reputation for, you know, things that they put out there in the public around public health was, you know, accurate. Instead, it was just, I mean, it's like you said, it's outright lies.
Tim Andrews 0:00:24
Now, again, if they said, we don't think it's 95% safer, let's discuss. I think it's 95% safer. I think the meta-analysis that the UK put out is pretty accurate. If they disagree with Cochrane on if they're more effective than other quit smoking aids, again, I think Cochrane is the gold standard of medical analysis.
If they want to disagree with that and say, look, maybe it's not five times more effective, that's fine. I would accept that as a legitimate debate. I would disagree with that. I would accept it. If they want to just lie about a valley, they want to just lie about popcorn lung, if they just want to make up statistics, they want to just...
Like there was one yesterday where they put out a tweet just making up absolute BS about vaping being possibly more harmful than smoking. There's no basis in reality about this. It is just complete lies. And it's lies that unfortunately comes with a cost because a lot of people will listen to this. They won't take up a reduced risk.
I have a friend, a friend of mine, you would think would know better, who took up smoking to quit vaping. The smoker was vaping. because he actually started believing that vaping was worse than smoking. There was a committee hearing I was in. This was in one of the US states, and there was a teacher who was testifying.
She was very, very concerned about vaping, and she caught her daughter with... her 16-year-old daughter with vapes, and she was so concerned about this. But she got her daughter to stop vaping because she started buying cigarettes for her daughter. This was her testimony at a legislative hearing and she was proud of this. This was not her, like, saying there's a bad thing.
She was saying, I'm really happy I was able to get my daughter to quit vaping by giving her cigarettes.
Brent Stafford 0:02:11
Last year... year a tobacco control professional from Public Health in Ontario was doing an interview with the CBC and discussing about how while it's tragic he can understand that teenagers would pick up cigarette smoking in order to quit vaping because of the vile things that are inside the e-cigarette.
Tim Andrews 0:02:33
The thing is, nicotine is not a carcinogen. There is no evidence that nicotine is a carcinogen. WHO doesn't consider it a carcinogen. FDA doesn't consider it a carcinogen. IARC doesn't consider it a carcinogen. IARC thinks basically everything is a carcinogen.
IARC, when they've done their studies on carcinogens, the only things they found isn't carcinogenic are nicotine and toothbrush bristles. It's effects on you, as everybody I think listening will know, it's no worse than caffeine. Like it'll slightly short-term spike your blood pressure, no real negative long-term effects.
So the pros for the nicotine with tobacco isn't the nicotine, it's the combustion in cigarettes. This is not saying anything. Unfortunately, all of these vested interests are trying to obscure uncontrovertible scientific truth. And again, the fact that nicotine doesn't cause cancer isn't a question of debate.
There is not a single scientist in the world who thinks nicotine causes cancer or heart disease or lung disease or those sorts of things. Nobody is making that argument, except the social media accounts of the WHO and politicians who want to ban these products.