President von der Leyen’s WEF Speech is Sheer Manipulation

If there is one thing the past few years have taught us, it is that the people applying “misinformation” rules (e.g. the “fact-checkers”) are often the ones lying to or deceiving the public

In a recent address to the World Economic Forum, EU President Ursula von der Leyen, citing the WEF’s annual “global risk report,” pointed to “misinformation and disinformation” as the greatest risks facing the global business community at this time. These risks are “serious,” in her view, “because they limit our ability to tackle the big global challenges we are facing” – climate, demographics and technological changes, and “spiraling regional conflicts and intensified geopolitical competition.”

The answer to the risks of “misinformation” and “disinformation,” in President von der Leyen’s estimation, is for “businesses and governments” to “work together” to get a grip on the problem. Though von der Leyen does not use the word “censorship” in her address, the example she offers of businesses and governments “working together” is the European Digital Services Act, which imposes a legal requirement upon large online platforms like X/Twitter and Meta/Facebook to censor misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech.

Few would question the claim that artificial intelligence, bots, and various malicious actors can leverage social media and other digital “information highways” to confuse, disorient, and manipulate citizens. However, the President of the European Commission, like any smart politician, knows how to milk a crisis to expand her own power, and her January 16th speech at Davos was a tour de force in crisis manipulation.

She could have used her unique position of leadership to underline the true nature of the threat of disinformation, which is a threat coming from all directions – not just from malicious private actors, but from governments that run “information” campaigns designed to harness people’s primal instincts, most notably fear and solidarity, in support of their preferred policies. Ms von der Leyen could have used her platform to caution her audience about the dangers of handing the keys to the internet to a handful of poweful actors with an evident interest in silencing their critics.

But instead, acting in true political form, President von der Leyen presented an utterly self-serving, one-sided, and dishonest picture of the risks of “disinformation” and “misinformation,” reminiscent of the musings of a dictator. The general narrative she conveyed was that the purveyors of “misinformation” are throwing a spanner in the works of global cooperation, but that if businesses and governments just pull together, they can nip this avalanche of disinformation and misinformation in the bud. This narrative is wrong in so many ways:

This naïve view of “us the world’s heroic business and political elite” and “them the nasty disinformation-producers” distracts attention away from the rather inconvenient fact that disinformation and misinformation show up on all sides of the political spectrum. There is no “global team” that can safely be entrusted with the task of quashing “misinformation.” If there is one thing the past few years have taught us, it is that the people applying “misinformation” rules (e.g. the “fact-checkers”) are often the ones lying to or deceiving the public, whether on the origins of the coronavirus, the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines, or some other issue of public importance.
Given the fact that “misinformation” and “disinformation” is spread all over the political spectrum and not concentrated in the hands of a few easily fingered malicious actors, in practice the very perception of what counts as “misinformation” and “disinformation” often depends on one’s political interests and biases, and is not a morally or politically neutral category.
Dictators and tyrants are quick to accuse their critics of “misinformation” and “disinformation” and to blur the dividing line between reasonable dissent and malicious “disinformation”- clearly, they recognize that the term has value as a vehicle of propaganda. Repeatedly seeking to silence one’s critics under the pretext that they are threatening democracy with “disinformation” is proper to dictators, not governors bound by principles of democratic accountability. A democratic ruler accepts that their policies may be publicly challenged, even if this slows down their implementation. A tyrannical ruler, on the other hand, is impatient with criticism and would prefer to just shut up their critics.
Finally, the appeal to solidarity and cooperation in the fight against disinformation is rather disingenuous, to say the least, given that the example of public-private cooperation given by von der Leyen conspicuously involves coercive intrusion by EU bureaucrats in the moderation policies of online platforms. Nobody would suggest that online platforms are run by angels, or that their moderation policies are immune to criticism, but the whole narrative of “Let’s work together for the common good” falls to pieces when the main tool of “cooperation” is a piece of legislation (Digital Services Act) that enthrones a political elite and their employees as the coercive arbiters of truth and falsehood on the internet. This is a naked power grab by the European Commission and EU member-State governments, not “working together” with businesses to combat disinformation.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society in Pamplona, Spain, and a recipient of the prestigious Ramón y Cajal research grant (2017-2021, extended through 2023), awarded by the Spanish government to support outstanding research activities. Prior to his appointment to the University of Navarra, he held several research and teaching positions in the United States, including visiting assistant professor at Bucknell and Villanova, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Princeton University’s James Madison Program. Dr Thunder earned his BA and MA in philosophy at University College Dublin, and his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Notre Dame.

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Bizarre Decisions about Nicotine Pouches Lead to the Wrong Products on Shelves

Published on November 4, 2025

Todayville

From the Brownstone Institute

Roger Bate

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.

Author

Roger Bate

Roger Bate is a Brownstone Fellow, Senior Fellow at the International Center for Law and Economics (Jan 2023-present), Board member of Africa Fighting Malaria (September 2000-present), and Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs (January 2000-present).

Addictions

The War on Commonsense Nicotine Regulation

Published on November 3, 2025

Todayville

From the Brownstone Institute

Roger Bate

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.