The protest is happening one day before the World Health Organisation’s Conference of Parties (COP9) meeting about the future of tobacco control in the world.
Today, smoking causes 8 million deaths a year and 250 million serious illnesses. Despite decades of multi-billion-dollar efforts, tobacco is still the number one cause of death in the world.
Organisers say: “The worldwide tobacco control community has creatively made the public believe that smoking is a problem of bad habits and therefore smokers' responsibility.
“As a result, science-based approaches like tobacco harm reduction are abandoned, and the deadliest product in human history continues to take 20 thousand human lives every day.”
The Smokers’ Rights Movement (1) sees an urgent need to bring attention to the absence of public oversight of tobacco policy and its devastating results on more than a billion smokers in the world. The Smokers’ Rights Movement says it demands changes from governments’ current ineffective and unscientific approach to a tobacco control that prioritises public health.
The protest features costumes made from black body bags with large magenta helium balloons on the top. Registration for the event is open
The Smokers’ Rights Movement is an online, crowd-funded community collaborating on a variety of projects to work towards eliminating smoking deaths. Started in 2021 as a non-profit organisation, it says it is quickly growing through online and offline activities.
On 8 November 2021 in Geneva, WHO is holding the COP9 conference. The Smokers’ Rights Movement says this is “another step in the shadows to decide the fate of 1.3 billion smokers. This is about us. Let’s show them that not inviting us to the talks is a mistake!”
News from:https://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/news/politics-campaigns/2021-11-02_geneva-protest.html