WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the strategic dialogue 'Healthy Planet, Healthy Future: uniting for tobacco-free generations' – 17 November 2025

Your Excellency Deputy Prime Minister Frank Vandenbroucke,

Honourable Minister Cristina Lustemberg,

Dr Usman Ahmad Mushtaq, State Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Norway,

President of the Conference of the Parties, Dr Reina Roa,

Our Acting Head of Secretariat Andrew Black - and I join Andrew in thanking Adriana for her leadership,

Dear colleagues and friends,

Tobacco kills more than 7 million people every year.

We're so used to saying it that it no longer shocks us. But it should.

Seven million people. That's about the population of Hong Kong, or Kuala Lumpur, or Riyadh, or Baghdad, or Santiago or Madrid, wiped out every single year.

If tobacco were a virus, we would call it a pandemic.

Researchers would race to develop vaccines against it.

Governments and public health institutions would do everything to prevent its spread, to protect people from it, and to mitigate its economic, social and environmental impact.

Instead, tobacco is a multi-billion dollar industry, rewarded by investors and defended by an army of lobbyists.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is the world's best defence against this unprecedented health threat. And it works.

Since the FCTC entered into force 20 years ago, tobacco use has dropped by one third globally.

Today, over 6.1 billion people, three-quarters of the world's population, are protected by at least one of the WHO MPOWER tobacco control measures, compared with just one billion in 2007.

The world is using less tobacco, but there are still 1.2 billion people who use tobacco in our world - one in five adults.

And the industry continues to develop new products to hook new customers, and to continue profiting from addiction, disease and death.

The tobacco industry's problem is that it keeps killing its own customers. So it needs to recruit new ones.

Schools have become the new battleground, where tobacco companies seek to recruit teenagers, with bright colours, sweet flavours and social media influencers.

Targeting children with toxic and addictive products is not harm reduction, its harm production.

We all have a responsibility to protect our children from these attacks - parents, teachers, activists, legislators, governments, civil society - all of us.

In the face of these threats, the Convention remains as relevant as ever.

We must continue advocating for its urgent and accelerated implementation.

We must continue to be on our guard against the tobacco industry and its tactics - even to infiltrate and undermine this meeting of the COP.

Let me assure you that I remain personally committed to using the full force of the Convention to protect health from the scourge of tobacco.

Let me leave you with three key requests.

First, we urge all Member States who are not yet party to the convention to ratify it.

Second, we urge all Parties to continue working towards implementation of the full package of MPOWER interventions at best-practice level, for all tobacco and nicotine products.

And third, we urge all Parties to be on their guard against the tobacco industry, whose only motivation is to protect profit, not people.

Thank you all for your continuing commitment to the WHO FCTC and its implementation.

Every death from tobacco is a preventable one. We have the tools to protect people now and in future generations. Let's use them.

Thank you.