Brownstone Institute
The WHO, the UN, and the Reality of Human Greed
From the Brownstone Institute
BY
The World Health Organization (WHO) is not plotting to take over the world. We need to remember what it is; an organization of fairly ordinary people, not especially experts in their field, who have landed jobs and benefits that most of us would envy. Not intrinsically nefarious, the organization is just being obedient to those who fund it and who define how those funds must be used. This is necessary if its staff are to keep their jobs.
The WHO is, however, promoting a new treaty being discussed by its governing body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), aimed at centralizing its control over health emergencies. The WHA is also amending the International Health Regulations (IHR), which have force under international law, to give the WHO power to demand lockdowns, mandate vaccines for you and your family, and prevent you from travelling.
‘Health emergencies,’ in this context, are any potential risk that the Director-General determines might cause a significant problem to health. This could be a viral variant somewhere, an outbreak of information that he/she disagrees with, or even changing weather. The current DG has already insisted that all of these are major and growing threats. He even declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern after 5 people in the world died of monkeypox.
The rest of the United Nations (UN), in its current desperation over impending climate Armageddon, is much the same as the WHO. As temperatures reach giddy heights that were useful for growing meat and barley in Medieval Greenland, most of its staff don’t really believe we are on the cusp of extinction. They are just ordinary people paid to say these things, and concerned about job security and promotion if they don’t.
People whose wealth has made them very powerful see great gain in having the WHO and the UN act in this way. These people have also invested heavily in the media and politics to ensure broad support. Staff of the WHO and the UN who fight this from within are hardly going to enhance their career prospects. There is also just enough of a grain of truth in the stories (viruses do kill people and CO2 is rising while the climate is changing) to self-justify the overall harm they know they are doing.
The advantages of organizational capture
In reality, large organizations work for those who fund them. Most of their staff just do what they are told and accept their paychecks. A few courageous ones tend to leave or get pushed, many who lack the courage of their convictions hide behind the organization hoping that others will step up first, and some are a bit clueless and cannot really figure out what is going on. An unfortunate few genuinely feel trapped into submission due to difficult personal circumstances.
When the ethos of funding the WHO and the wider UN was about helping the world’s populations to improve their lot, this is what the staff generally advocated for and worked to implement. Now that they are guided by the very wealthy and by multinational corporations that have investors to please, they advocate and work for the benefit of these new masters with the same enthusiasm. This is why such organizations are so useful to those who wish to expand personal power.
In discussing how a relative few can influence or run these powerful international organizations, it is easy to think it is all unbelievable or conspiracist, if you don’t pause and really apply your brain. How could so few take over the whole world? If someone has as much money as whole countries, but does not have a country to look after, they really do have quite a lot of scope. Applying some of this money strategically to specific institutions that then serve as tools to influence the rest is achievable. Their staff will be grateful for this apparent largesse.
Institutional capture of this type is achievable when we relax rules on taxation and conflict of interest. allowing certain individuals and corporations to gain vast financial leverage and to openly apply it. If we then allow them to form public-private partnerships, their aims can be further subsidized with our money. If we allow our politicians to treat politics as a lifetime career, they will soon realize that rather than pleasing the populace it is more effective to cozy up with these people who can fund their career.
They can do this behind closed doors at resorts like Davos, while the corporate media distracts us by fawning over a teenager on the main stage raging against the machine. The result is inevitable, because the politicians need money and positive media coverage, and the cartels of the wealthy need more amicable laws.
International public health is now a stunning example of such corporate capture. The same entities fund the training colleges, research groups where the students will seek jobs, modelling that will define their priorities, agencies where they will implement their learning, journals they will read, and the mass media that will assure them it is all for the best. The media will also publicly vilify those who step out of line. The climate issue is not terribly different if you dig a bit. Those who comply will have assured careers, and those who don’t will not. Such industries will then shift to policies, and study results, that benefit the sponsors.
Try to think of a rich person who genuinely lost interest in becoming wealthier. There are a few saints in history, but greed is a powerful force that is seldom assuaged by accumulation of the stuff that greed seeks. There is nothing new under the sun, not greed and not those who try to pretend that the fruit of greed is something good.
The opportunities of feudalism
To achieve success in accumulating more power and wealth, you would have to, by definition, take sovereignty and wealth from others. Most people don’t like having this taken away from them. Power in a true democracy is granted by the people, not taken, and only held on the consent of those who granted it. Few ordinary people want to give up their wealth to someone already wealthier than them – they may consider transferring it in taxes in order to gain mutual benefit, but not giving it to another to use as the receiver pleases. To succeed in accumulating power and wealth it is therefore often necessary to take it by force or by deceit. Deceit (lying) is usually the least risky alternative.
Lies and deceit don’t work on everyone, but they work on many. As the enemy of deceit is truth, and the enemy of tyranny is equality (i.e., individual sovereignty or bodily autonomy), people who insist on truth and individual rights must be suppressed by those who wish to accumulate power. The most effective way is to silence them, and to reassure the majority who have fallen for the deceit that these nonconformists are the enemy (remember “Pandemic of the unvaccinated”).
Denigration and scapegoating, using terms such as “anti-X,” “Y-denier,” or “so-called Z,” make the non-complying minority look negative and inferior. The majority can then safely ignore them, and even feel superior in doing so.
If the mass media can be brought on board, it becomes almost impossible for non-compliers to clear their name and get their message across. The largest funders of media are now pharmaceutical companies. They are also large funders of politicians. The largest owners of media are BlackRock and Vanguard (who are coincidentally also the largest shareholders of several pharmaceutical companies). So, imagine how profitable it would be if these investment houses, directly and through lackey organizations such as the World Economic Forum, WHO or the UN, thought of using such assets to provide maximum profit (as, indeed, in an amoral business environment, they are supposed to do).
If a relatively new virus came along in such a scenario, all that would be needed is to apply those media and political assets to sow fear and confine people, then offer them a pharmaceutical way out of their confinement. Such a scheme would virtually print money for their investors. This pharmaceutical escape could even be made to look like a saving grace, rather than a scheme born of, and run through, greed.
Facing reality
A short glance at reality indicates that we do seem to be going through such a scenario. We have got society into a total mess by dropping the basic rules that kept greed at bay, then let greed run rampant and called it “progress.” Fear and impoverishment are symptoms.
The WHO, the UN, and the mass media are tools. Soon other tools will impose Central Bank Digital Currencies and generously provide a Universal Basic Income (an allowance, as is given to a child) to relieve the impoverishment. This programmable currency will be spent on what the financiers decide, and withdrawn on their whim, such as on any sign of disloyalty. It is exactly what slavery is, except a whip, or even the current approach of media sponsorship, will no longer be required to keep people in line.
To fix this, it will be necessary to take the tools away from those who are misusing them, whether the tools are the WHO, UN or whatever. If your really useful hammer is going to be used by an intruder to break your legs, then get rid of the hammer. There are more important things in life than banging in nails.
Put more plainly, as democratic countries we should not be funding organizations that do the bidding of others to impoverish us and erode our democracy. That would be self-destruction. We need to decide whether individual sovereignty is a worthwhile cause. Is it really true that all are born equal and should live equal? Or should we embrace a hierarchical, caste-like, or feudal society? History suggests that those on top will probably be keen on the feudal approach. Therefore, those not on top, and those who hold to beliefs that transcend greed, had better start taking this problem seriously. Ceasing support for institutions that are being used to steal from us is an obvious starting point.
By regaining maturity regarding the reality of human nature, we can start dismantling the prison being built around us. Treat the sponsored media as if they are sponsored. Try to tell the truth as often and as rigorously as we can. When light is shed on a trap, others are less likely to fall into it. When enough decide that what is intrinsically ours must remain ours, those who want to take it will be unable to do so. Then we can address health, climate, and whatever else in a way that benefits humanity, rather than just benefiting a bunch of wealthy self-entitled miscreants.
Brownstone Institute
Bizarre Decisions about Nicotine Pouches Lead to the Wrong Products on Shelves
From the Brownstone Institute
A walk through a dozen convenience stores in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, says a lot about how US nicotine policy actually works. Only about one in eight nicotine-pouch products for sale is legal. The rest are unauthorized—but they’re not all the same. Some are brightly branded, with uncertain ingredients, not approved by any Western regulator, and clearly aimed at impulse buyers. Others—like Sweden’s NOAT—are the opposite: muted, well-made, adult-oriented, and already approved for sale in Europe.
Yet in the United States, NOAT has been told to stop selling. In September 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the company a warning letter for offering nicotine pouches without marketing authorization. That might make sense if the products were dangerous, but they appear to be among the safest on the market: mild flavors, low nicotine levels, and recyclable paper packaging. In Europe, regulators consider them acceptable. In America, they’re banned. The decision looks, at best, strange—and possibly arbitrary.
What the Market Shows
My October 2025 audit was straightforward. I visited twelve stores and recorded every distinct pouch product visible for sale at the counter. If the item matched one of the twenty ZYN products that the FDA authorized in January, it was counted as legal. Everything else was counted as illegal.
Two of the stores told me they had recently received FDA letters and had already removed most illegal stock. The other ten stores were still dominated by unauthorized products—more than 93 percent of what was on display. Across all twelve locations, about 12 percent of products were legal ZYN, and about 88 percent were not.
The illegal share wasn’t uniform. Many of the unauthorized products were clearly high-nicotine imports with flashy names like Loop, Velo, and Zimo. These products may be fine, but some are probably high in contaminants, and a few often with very high nicotine levels. Others were subdued, plainly meant for adult users. NOAT was a good example of that second group: simple packaging, oat-based filler, restrained flavoring, and branding that makes no effort to look “cool.” It’s the kind of product any regulator serious about harm reduction would welcome.
Enforcement Works
To the FDA’s credit, enforcement does make a difference. The two stores that received official letters quickly pulled their illegal stock. That mirrors the agency’s broader efforts this year: new import alerts to detain unauthorized tobacco products at the border (see also Import Alert 98-06), and hundreds of warning letters to retailers, importers, and distributors.
But effective enforcement can’t solve a supply problem. The list of legal nicotine-pouch products is still extremely short—only a narrow range of ZYN items. Adults who want more variety, or stores that want to meet that demand, inevitably turn to gray-market suppliers. The more limited the legal catalog, the more the illegal market thrives.
Why the NOAT Decision Appears Bizarre
The FDA’s own actions make the situation hard to explain. In January 2025, it authorized twenty ZYN products after finding that they contained far fewer harmful chemicals than cigarettes and could help adult smokers switch. That was progress. But nine months later, the FDA has approved nothing else—while sending a warning letter to NOAT, arguably the least youth-oriented pouch line in the world.
The outcome is bad for legal sellers and public health. ZYN is legal; a handful of clearly risky, high-nicotine imports continue to circulate; and a mild, adult-market brand that meets European safety and labeling rules is banned. Officially, NOAT’s problem is procedural—it lacks a marketing order. But in practical terms, the FDA is punishing the very design choices it claims to value: simplicity, low appeal to minors, and clean ingredients.
This approach also ignores the differences in actual risk. Studies consistently show that nicotine pouches have far fewer toxins than cigarettes and far less variability than many vapes. The biggest pouch concerns are uneven nicotine levels and occasional traces of tobacco-specific nitrosamines, depending on manufacturing quality. The serious contamination issues—heavy metals and inconsistent dosage—belong mostly to disposable vapes, particularly the flood of unregulated imports from China. Treating all “unauthorized” products as equally bad blurs those distinctions and undermines proportional enforcement.
A Better Balance: Enforce Upstream, Widen the Legal Path
My small Montgomery County survey suggests a simple formula for improvement.
First, keep enforcement targeted and focused on suppliers, not just clerks. Warning letters clearly change behavior at the store level, but the biggest impact will come from auditing distributors and importers, and stopping bad shipments before they reach retail shelves.
Second, make compliance easy. A single-page list of authorized nicotine-pouch products—currently the twenty approved ZYN items—should be posted in every store and attached to distributor invoices. Point-of-sale systems can block barcodes for anything not on the list, and retailers could affirm, once a year, that they stock only approved items.
Third, widen the legal lane. The FDA launched a pilot program in September 2025 to speed review of new pouch applications. That program should spell out exactly what evidence is needed—chemical data, toxicology, nicotine release rates, and behavioral studies—and make timely decisions. If products like NOAT meet those standards, they should be authorized quickly. Legal competition among adult-oriented brands will crowd out the sketchy imports far faster than enforcement alone.
The Bottom Line
Enforcement matters, and the data show it works—where it happens. But the legal market is too narrow to protect consumers or encourage innovation. The current regime leaves a few ZYN products as lonely legal islands in a sea of gray-market pouches that range from sensible to reckless.
The FDA’s treatment of NOAT stands out as a case study in inconsistency: a quiet, adult-focused brand approved in Europe yet effectively banned in the US, while flashier and riskier options continue to slip through. That’s not a public-health victory; it’s a missed opportunity.
If the goal is to help adult smokers move to lower-risk products while keeping youth use low, the path forward is clear: enforce smartly, make compliance easy, and give good products a fair shot. Right now, we’re doing the first part well—but failing at the second and third. It’s time to fix that.
Addictions
The War on Commonsense Nicotine Regulation
From the Brownstone Institute
Cigarettes kill nearly half a million Americans each year. Everyone knows it, including the Food and Drug Administration. Yet while the most lethal nicotine product remains on sale in every gas station, the FDA continues to block or delay far safer alternatives.
Nicotine pouches—small, smokeless packets tucked under the lip—deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. They eliminate the tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens that make cigarettes so deadly. The logic of harm reduction couldn’t be clearer: if smokers can get nicotine without smoke, millions of lives could be saved.
Sweden has already proven the point. Through widespread use of snus and nicotine pouches, the country has cut daily smoking to about 5 percent, the lowest rate in Europe. Lung-cancer deaths are less than half the continental average. This “Swedish Experience” shows that when adults are given safer options, they switch voluntarily—no prohibition required.
In the United States, however, the FDA’s tobacco division has turned this logic on its head. Since Congress gave it sweeping authority in 2009, the agency has demanded that every new product undergo a Premarket Tobacco Product Application, or PMTA, proving it is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” That sounds reasonable until you see how the process works.
Manufacturers must spend millions on speculative modeling about how their products might affect every segment of society—smokers, nonsmokers, youth, and future generations—before they can even reach the market. Unsurprisingly, almost all PMTAs have been denied or shelved. Reduced-risk products sit in limbo while Marlboros and Newports remain untouched.
Only this January did the agency relent slightly, authorizing 20 ZYN nicotine-pouch products made by Swedish Match, now owned by Philip Morris. The FDA admitted the obvious: “The data show that these specific products are appropriate for the protection of public health.” The toxic-chemical levels were far lower than in cigarettes, and adult smokers were more likely to switch than teens were to start.
The decision should have been a turning point. Instead, it exposed the double standard. Other pouch makers—especially smaller firms from Sweden and the US, such as NOAT—remain locked out of the legal market even when their products meet the same technical standards.
The FDA’s inaction has created a black market dominated by unregulated imports, many from China. According to my own research, roughly 85 percent of pouches now sold in convenience stores are technically illegal.
The agency claims that this heavy-handed approach protects kids. But youth pouch use in the US remains very low—about 1.5 percent of high-school students according to the latest National Youth Tobacco Survey—while nearly 30 million American adults still smoke. Denying safer products to millions of addicted adults because a tiny fraction of teens might experiment is the opposite of public-health logic.
There’s a better path. The FDA should base its decisions on science, not fear. If a product dramatically reduces exposure to harmful chemicals, meets strict packaging and marketing standards, and enforces Tobacco 21 age verification, it should be allowed on the market. Population-level effects can be monitored afterward through real-world data on switching and youth use. That’s how drug and vaccine regulation already works.
Sweden’s evidence shows the results of a pragmatic approach: a near-smoke-free society achieved through consumer choice, not coercion. The FDA’s own approval of ZYN proves that such products can meet its legal standard for protecting public health. The next step is consistency—apply the same rules to everyone.
Combustion, not nicotine, is the killer. Until the FDA acts on that simple truth, it will keep protecting the cigarette industry it was supposed to regulate.
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