Trump should end WHO’s sway over the FDA

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump fulfilled his promise to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO). Now, the Trump administration should work to end the World Health Organization’s influence over the Food and Drug Administration. 

The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) performance during the COVID-19 pandemic was poor, with questionable public health guidance and a reluctance to hold the Chinese Communist Party to account for its role in the virus’s spread. As Zach Weissmuller reported at Reason.com:

The WHO also praised China for releasing the virus’s genome while neglecting to mention that it took them at least 17 days to do so. It didn’t report human-to-human transmission until late January—even though Chinese doctors suspected it at least a month earlier. Although the extreme lockdown of Wuhan likely saved thousands of lives, WHO scientists weren’t allowed into Wuhan until 3 weeks after the outbreak first came to light, leaving open many questions about measures the government took in the interim. Meanwhile, the WHO praised the country for its supposed openness.

Despite these failures, the WHO is encouraging members to sign a pandemic treaty that would threaten free speech and intellectual property if the U.S. were to remain a member.

While the WHO’s potential interference has diminished, remnants of its influence over American health policy remain. In the final days of the Biden administration, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) resurrected a proposal to mandate the removal of almost all nicotine from cigarettes, a de facto cigarette ban. The FDA justifies its action based on modeling informed by the guesstimates of a handful of public health academics, claiming a vast number of smokers will quit and subsequently live longer.

The rule was initially pushed by former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb in 2017. However, after Gottlieb left the first Trump administration to take on other projects, the ban was wisely cast aside. While Gottlieb was the first to advance the rule and Biden the one to try and push it over the line, the ban’s origins lie just as much with the WHO and its advisory note, titled “Global Nicotine Reduction Strategy,” published in 2015.

The FDA’s proposed rule follows the WHO’s playbook. “In alignment with this recommendation from the World Health Organization, this proposed rule would cover combusted cigarettes and certain other combusted tobacco products (i.e., cigarette tobacco, RYO tobacco, cigars other than premium cigars, and pipe tobacco),” said the FDA at the time.

Following the World Health Organization’s guidance, the FDA’s plan would ban more than 99% of cigarettes, small cigars, and pipe tobacco.

The FDA also points to the WHO’s guidance that the ban be combined with providing behavioral support, nicotine replacement therapies (NRT), and other medications for smokers denied legal access to cigarettes. The pharmaceutical industry’s smoking cessation products are unpopular and less effective compared to offerings consumers prefer, such as vapes and nicotine pouches, which the industry has lobbied to place under stricter regulations. Indeed, Pfizer has funded research claiming that denicotinized cigarettes used in combination with pharmacotherapies increase smoking cessation rates, research that has been cited by the only company making products that would comply with the FDA’s rule. 

No country has implemented such a radical policy, so no real-world evidence suggests it will work out as the FDA says it will. When a similar policy was advanced in New Zealand in 2022, it was abandoned after the election of a conservative government. Left unchecked, the FDA would have America serve as a guinea pig for a dangerous policy experiment.

The risks of the policy are clear, with law enforcement already warning it could mean disaster and “a gift with a bow and balloons to organized crime cartels with it, whether it’s cartels, Chinese organized crime, or Russian mafia. It’s going to keep America smoking, and it’s going to make the streets more violent,” Rich Marianos, former assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the current chair of the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network, told Fox News. 

The WHO itself recognized these concerns in a 2018 report, highlighting fears over increased illicit trade, relapses by ex-smokers thanks to low-priced black market cigarettes, and declining tax revenue, but continues to believe these risks will be worth the benefit.

On April 2, 2025, FDA Commissioner Martin McKary told staff in an all-hands meeting that the agency needed a new approach: “Challenging what we believe to be true, challenging deeply held assumptions that lack evidence, and allowing experts to debate new approaches to old problems is exactly what we need right now.” 

The Trump administration is swiftly junking some costly and unnecessary regulations advanced by the Biden administration. Trump was right the first time to ditch an untested, potentially dangerous policy, and it is in keeping with McKary’s mission to base policy on sound evidence, not intuitions, hopes, and optimistic models, to do so again. 

The post Trump should end WHO’s sway over the FDA appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Source: https://reason.org/commentary/trump-should-end-whos-sway-over-the-fda/