{"id":26251,"date":"2025-09-02T10:03:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T10:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/?p=26251"},"modified":"2025-09-02T10:23:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T10:23:05","slug":"profiteering-from-the-misery-of-smokers-five-who-anti-vape-bureaucrats-making-more-than-uk-pm-french-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/post\/profiteering-from-the-misery-of-smokers-five-who-anti-vape-bureaucrats-making-more-than-uk-pm-french-president\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cProfiteering from the misery of smokers\u201d: Five WHO anti-vape bureaucrats making more than UK PM, French President"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Five staff members working at the World Health Organisation\u2019s tobacco control department earn more than the UK Prime Minister and the French President, new figures released by the WHO show; with the highest paid staff member (presumably Head of the Secretariat Adriana Blanco Marquizo<\/a>) taking home around $300,000 (\u20ac256,000, \u00a3221,000) per year; more than the UK Prime Minister ($232,930) and the French President ($234,147).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The four next highest paid FCTC staff take home $244,188. Richard Pruen, co-founder of the Safer Nicotine Wiki<\/a>, called the payments \u201cprofiteering from the misery of smokers\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FCTC Convention Secretariat – the full-time bureaucrats who oversee the Framework Convention day-to-day – released the figures as part of their budget demands for 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposals reveal that the Secretariat has requested a budget of over $8.5 million to cover the wages of 19 staff for two years, equivalent to $223,684 per employee per year. It has asked for a staggering 8% pay rise for all staff on top of its 2024-2025 numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the lowest paid member of staff earns $96,930, twice the average salary in Germany and three times the average in the UK. Put differently, the number is over 30 times the global median income and over 134x the average in the world\u2019s poorest country, Sudan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“It seems that FCTC are immune to the deepest cuts ever experienced by the World Health Organisation\u201d, said Derek Yach, a former Executive Director for Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health and the WHO. \u201cSurely the funds could have done more to support Low and Medium Income Countries?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The UK contributed almost $500,000 to the Secretariat\u2019s costs in 2024-25. The EU contributed $220,000, and Member States added a further $2.1 million, with Germany stumping up almost $700,000 and France $500,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s outrageous that taxpayers are helping to fund WHO bureaucrats who earn more than the Prime Ministers & Presidents, while their main contribution is trying to ban the very products that are reducing smoking\u201d said Mark Oates, Director of UK pressure group WeVape<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe FCTC Secretariat has become a bloated, unaccountable body more interested in protecting its own salaries than in protecting public health\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Countries’ contributions to the FCTC\u2019s budget are spent almost exclusively on this staff bill; the budget foresees that 70% of \u201cassessed contributions\u201d – WHO-speak for the money they get from member countries – will be spent on staff costs over the next two years.<\/p>\n

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Five staff members working at the World Health Organisation\u2019s tobacco control department earn more than the UK Prime Minister and the French President, new figures released by the WHO show; with the highest paid staff member (presumably Head of the Secretariat Adriana…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":990005,"featured_media":26252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[257],"tags":[327,328,334,186],"slider":[],"class_list":["post-26251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-global","tag-nicotine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/990005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26275,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26251\/revisions\/26275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26251"},{"taxonomy":"slider","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/slider?post=26251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}