Palau asks UN to regulate nicotine

By Pacific Island Times News Staff

Koror (Office of the President) — Palau has asked the United Nations to place nicotine, the addictive molecule in cigarettes, vapes and pouches, under global drug control.

Tobacco and nicotine products kill more than seven million people every year. Without decisive action, the WHO projects that up to one billion people could die from tobacco-related diseases this century.

“We may be a small nation, but the scale of a problem has never determined who acts on it,” Palau President Surangel S. Whipps Jr., said.

“Millions die every year. More than a billion are dependent on nicotine — most of them hooked as children. We could not look away. We call on governments around the world to join us in asking the United Nations to finally treat nicotine like the toxic and addictive drug that it is.”

No government had initiated such a process in more than 75 years of international drug control. Nicotine is among the few major addictive substances not scheduled under UN law.

If the vote goes ahead, it would be the first time the international community applied the same rules of trade, monitoring and control to nicotine as to other addictive substances.

Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances in the world. The U.S. Surgeon General concluded in 1988 that the processes driving nicotine addiction are similar to those behind addiction to heroin and cocaine, a finding that recent neurobiological evidence has only strengthened since.

Nicotine’s health harms extend well beyond tobacco addiction. It is directly toxic, particularly to developing brains, with lasting impacts on cognition as well as cardiovascular health.

Today’s e-cigarettes can deliver nicotine as fast as a cigarette, and both e-cigarettes and oral nicotine pouches can deliver higher doses than a cigarette.

More than 15 million adolescents aged 13 to 15 use e-cigarettes worldwide, nine times the rate of adults in the same countries.

Palau has taken some of the strongest measures in the world to keep nicotine products away from children. In 2023, Whipps signed legislation prohibiting the importation, distribution, sale, possession, and use of electronic cigarettes, following evidence that nearly half of Palauan adolescents had used e-cigarettes.

In 2025, Palau ranked second best out of 100 countries in the Tobacco Industry Interference Index, indicating minimal industry influence on its public health policy.

“This is about our children,” said First Lady Valerie R. Whipps, chair of the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Palau. “A new generation of young people across the Pacific are being targeted by products that have never been critically reviewed under UN law. Every child has the right to grow up free from manufactured nicotine addiction, no matter how small their island.”

Decades of tobacco control have delivered historic gains: smoke-free environments, graphic warnings, higher tobacco taxes and advertising bans. But existing regulations target tobacco products, not nicotine as a molecule, and they were written for a world of cigarettes and cigars.

Since then, companies have rolled out a new generation of products, including vapes and nicotine pouches in thousands of sweet flavors, branded as “tobacco-free” while delivering the same addictive molecule. They have moved faster than regulators can follow. Placing nicotine under international drug control would end that cycle.

“As someone who has lived with nicotine addiction, I know firsthand how powerful and destructive it can be,” said Kambes Kesolei, vice chair of the Coalition for Tobacco-Free Palau, and president of the Belau Association of Non-Governmental Organizations. “I have seen the impact it has had on the lives of many people in Palau and around the world, and as a health advocate today, I support any effort we can make to raise awareness of the dangers of this drug.”

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