Mr. Bill Gates
c/o Alex Reid, Gates Foundation
500 Fifth Avenue North, Seattle, WA 98109
Via Email
Dear Mr. Gates,
I was heartened to read your open memo on environmental policy this week, calling for a “rethink” and a “pivot” away from rigid orthodoxies where “human welfare takes a backseat.”
Your words resonated deeply because they echo the same outlook so many of us in the tobacco harm reduction community have been voicing.
That’s why I implore you to apply that same principled reflection from your memo to your longstanding opposition toward nicotine vaping products and the funding you've directed toward intractable prohibition groups.
As President of the American Vapor Manufacturers Association and having worked many years behind a retail vape counter, my vocation is advocacy for consumer choice in harm reduction, representing innovators who provide smokers with effective alternatives to combustible cigarettes.
Vaping isn't perfect, but the science is clear: it's a fraction of the risk of smoking. That’s backed up by randomized trials and the Cochrane Review showing it greatly boosts quit rates compared to traditional aids – along with population data that links vaping to plummeting cigarette use.
Yet your advocacy has fueled policies that equate vaping with tobacco's deadliest forms, prioritizing an absolutist anti-nicotine ideology over the millions of lives that could be transformed. This mirrors the climate missteps you critique — where a zeal for idealized purity crowds out pragmatic progress, leading to foreseeable harms like prolonged suffering for those trapped in the grip of cigarettes.
You and I both know how free enterprise can uplift countless lives. But I’m not just speaking as a businessperson. Here is an open letter from 15 past presidents of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, published in the American Journal of Public Health making the same appeal.
These esteemed scientists reviewed decades of evidence, concluding that vaping's advantages — far fewer toxicants, improved lung function upon switching, and accelerated smoking declines — outweigh youth risks when policies are targeted and balanced. They warn against blanket restrictions like flavor bans, which deter adult cessation, potentially costing countless life-years. Yet your funding has amplified the opposite narrative, wholly at odds with your call this week for rigorous analysis to minimize human suffering.
Here’s a letter sent to your philanthropic partner in this crusade, Michael Bloomberg, from 28 leading thinkers in tobacco science urging a data-driven embrace of harm reduction. These are conscientious experts who've battled Big Tobacco for decades. They offered a private meeting to discuss evidence showing vaping as a complementary tool to the MPOWER strategies you both are funding. Yet Mr. Bloomberg had no response.
Similarly, the World Health Organization — where you are the single biggest donor —dismissed this open letter from 72 premiere specialists in nicotine science, policy, and practice, sent ahead of FCTC COP8.
It pleaded for distinguishing non-combustible innovations from cigarettes through risk-proportionate regulation, warning that prohibitions would perpetuate smoking in low-income countries by denying smokers viable alternatives. They got no response either and WHO continues to impose policies that strip these life-saving options from low-income countries around the globe, where smoking kills the most.
So far as I know, you have never spoken with any of these preeminent thinkers although I would urge you to reach out.
But can you see how that looks to those of us directly impacted by your philanthropy? You often call for deliberative thinking, sober analysis, and rejection of groupthink — while your grantees are entirely excluding these esteemed voices, ones that share your dedication to ending smoking's deadly toll.
Think about how ordinary people must feel when we have to plead with you, hat in hand, to an unelected person whose influence comes mainly from his net worth, all so that we may simply access the highly effective and vastly safer alternatives we need to stop smoking.
Since you do so much work in South Africa, let me offer a few words from NYU Public Health’s Dr. David Abrams. "I am actually quite angry and embarrassed and ashamed of my association with public health in the same way I grew up in apartheid South Africa,” he said at a recent conference. “It’s about the people and it's about human rights. How arrogant we all are to think we would know what somebody needs and wants without talking to them, listening to them and seeing the unique humanity of why people do what they do, by listening deeply and understanding where they're coming from, before we make our arrogant public health and other judgmental prescriptions. In so doing, we diminish ourselves and them and create the us versus them dichotomy that I'm ashamed to see. What's happened in tobacco control? We are blowing the biggest opportunity to save lives that I've seen and that I think has occurred in since the use of tobacco in any form. We're absolutely ruining the opportunity. … One of the key factors is that there has been strong funding to communicate massive, exaggerated harms, and to suppress legitimate research and omit comparisons with cigarettes to the point where we have, in the United States, only 2.8% of the public accurately believing that e-cigarettes are much less harmful than cigarettes."
Mr. Gates, your legacy deserves to be one of bold innovation for humanity's betterment. I urge you to extend that outlook to vaping: fund independent research, engage these experts, and redirect resources toward policies that prioritize the welfare of people who smoke. Let's align your actions with your principles — saving lives, not preserving ideological purity. I'd welcome the chance to discuss this further.
Sincerely,
Allison Boughner
President, American Vapor Manufacturers