All through the WHO FCTC Convention of the Events (COP), the International Alliance for Tobacco Management (GATC) awards the Orchid to a stand out Celebration and the Soiled Ashtray to a Celebration working counter to a robust FCTC.
On Tuesday, November 18, 2025, Mexico received the Orchid Award within the GATC Day by day Bulletin:
“For delivering probably the most highly effective and uncompromising statements towards the tobacco trade at COP11 [on 17 November], a second of explicit significance for the area. Mexico made a transparent and forceful name for world motion, explicitly naming the trade as the most important impediment to progress. Their sturdy and passionate enchantment units the tone for COP11 and reinforces the urgency of holding the tobacco trade accountable!”
FCTC COP11 Opening Plenary Intervention from Mexico on November 17, 2025
[English Translation Below]
Quiero comenzar con una convicción easy: La salud pública requiere decisiones valientes. Venir a esta asamblea a mover una coma o revisar semántica cuando el problema no es diagnóstico, sino de acción, es quedarnos cortos frente a una realidad urgente. Porque allá afuera millones de personas están siendo persuadidas cada día para consumir productos que matan, por eso no podemos tener discusiones circulares mientras la industria tabacalera se reorganiza, se disfraza y avanza. Nos venden adicción, ilusión y ahora una vez más el engañoso riesgo reducido.
Hoy las niñas y los niños son su blanco predilecto para captar consumidores en edades tempranas. Cigarrillos electrónicos, bolsas de nicotina, dispositivos en aerosol que prometen modernidad, pero entregan enfermedad. Invocando falsamente libertades civiles, compran voluntades, financian campañas y penetran ministerios de salud y economía y organizaciones civiles. Y lo más grave, debilitan la obligación del Estado de proteger a su pueblo y, cuando aparece la enfermedad, con un cinismo sin medida, se disfrazan de benefactoras donando equipos a los mismos hospitales donde muere la gente por su causa.
Seamos sinceros, esta batalla no la podemos librar solos; ellos tienen poder económico y, a veces, lamentablemente, también poder político. Mientras nosotros apenas vamos, ellos ya vienen de regreso. Si seguimos actuando aislados, si cada país mantiene su propia estrategia, todo dependerá de la voluntad del gobierno en turno y eso nos vuelve vulnerables. Cuando cambian los gobiernos, cambian las prioridades y muchos terminan cediendo ante las empresas; por eso necesitamos medidas normativas, regulatorias y legales, que, respetando la autonomía de los pueblos, sirvan como referencia common para que las políticas de salud no dependan del giro político, sino del compromiso ético con la vida. Es lastimoso ver países que abren sus puertas a la industria tabacalera; y cada puerta que se le abre al tabaco en cualquier forma o día es una ventana que se le cierra a la salud. Derrotar a la salud pública es derrotar a la nación, y cada gobierno que cede a la industria no solo traiciona a su pueblo, nos traiciona a todos. Por eso les conmino a que construyamos un frente común internacional que no se deje dividir por tecnicismos y no por intereses comerciales; defender la salud pública exige firmeza, no retórica. Hoy aquí en Ginebra hagamos historia, dejemos de debatir palabras y convirtamos este momento en un punto de inflexión para la salud pública.
English Translation
I need to start with a easy conviction: public well being requires brave choices. Coming to this meeting to maneuver a comma or revise semantics, when the issue just isn’t analysis however motion, means we’re falling brief within the face of an pressing actuality. As a result of on the market, thousands and thousands of individuals are being persuaded daily to eat merchandise that kill, and for that motive, we can not interact in round discussions whereas the tobacco trade reorganizes, disguises itself, and continues to advance. They promote us habit, phantasm, and now, as soon as once more, the misleading notion of decreased danger.
At the moment, youngsters are their most popular targets to seize shoppers at an early age. Digital cigarettes, nicotine pouches, aerosol units that promise modernity however ship illness. Deceptively invoking civil liberties, they purchase affect, finance campaigns, and infiltrate ministries of well being and financial system, in addition to civil society organizations. And most regarding, they weaken the State’s obligation to guard its individuals; and when sickness seems, with boundless cynicism, they disguise themselves as benefactors by donating tools to the very hospitals the place individuals die due to them.
Allow us to be sincere: we can not combat this battle alone; they’ve financial energy and, sadly, generally political energy as properly. After we are simply starting, they’re already three steps forward. If we proceed appearing in isolation, if every nation maintains its personal technique, every thing will rely on the need of the federal government in energy, making us weak. When governments change, priorities change, and lots of find yourself giving in to those corporations. For this reason we want normative, regulatory, and authorized measures that, whereas respecting the autonomy of countries and their individuals, function common references in order that well being insurance policies don’t rely on political shifts however on an moral dedication to life. It’s painful to see international locations opening their doorways to the tobacco trade, as each door that’s opened to tobacco in any kind or on any day is a window closed to well being. Undermining public well being is undermining the nation, and each authorities that yields to the trade not solely betrays its personal individuals, it betrays all of us. Due to this fact, I urge you to construct a typical worldwide entrance that can’t be divided by technicalities or business pursuits. Defending public well being requires conviction, not rhetoric. At the moment, right here in Geneva, allow us to make historical past. Allow us to cease debating phrases and switch this second right into a turning level for public well being.
