Philip Morris call for UK cigarette ban concerns e-cigarettes

The CEO of one of the world’s biggest tobacco brands, Philip Morris International (PMI), now says he will stop selling cigarettes in the UK within a decade and that regulators should ban them altogether, although there is a big smelly caveat.

As reported by Business internPMI CEO Jacek Olczak told the Mail on Sunday that the company plans to “quit smoking”, adding that “in ten years at most you can completely solve the smoking problem.” Olczak, as well as PMI President André Calantzopoulos, said The telegraph that PMI is now backing an outright ban as part of the UK government’s plan to eliminate smoking by 2030.

“We can see the world without cigarettes,” Olczak told The Telegraph. “And in fact, the sooner it happens, the better it is for everyone.” Calantzopoulos likened the problem to switching to alternative energies and electric cars, saying that a cigarette the ban “could be a solution, but it is not enough”.

Calantzopoulos told The Telegraph that many smokers believe that alternatives to cigarettes are less dangerous than smoking and that the UK government should educate smokers to make “a choice of smoke-free alternatives” (which it’s already been, for memory). The caveat, of course, is that after fabricating countless billions of cowboy killers, PMI is extremely well positioned. to take advantage of this “smokeless” market with its own horrible product.

SME is separated from The Virginia tobacco company Philip Morris USA, a subsidiary of Altria, which manufactures Marlboro cigarettes and other famous brands like Virginia Slims in the United States. PMI separated from its American counterpart in 2008 in response to pressure from investors and as a way to protect against lawsuits brought by American smokers. Since, he pivoted to claim that the future of tobacco lies in alternatives to cigarettes, like his IQOS product, which heats a plug of tobacco to release smoke without in fact burns it.

PMI has marketed the IQOS device as if it was a safer alternative smoke or vape (but only in in a limited way in the United States, through Food and Drug Administration regulations). Although the IQOS device may output less toxic chemicals compared to cigarettes, the Atlantic declared in 2019 that many health experts are skeptical aboutnot-“Burn” are actually safer than traditional smoking. This is all the more true given the decades of the tobacco giant’s efforts to suppress science link between smoking and cancer and other lung diseases. In 2017, Reuters reported about irregularities in PMI-backed research that the company cited while lobbying health officials to approve IQOS. The report also detailed how PMI was pushing the device mainly in countries already experiencing a long-term decrease in smoking.

A 2018 review in the Tobacco control newspaper found that 20 of the 31 studies of non-combustion heaters were, at that time, funded by tobacco companies, including PMI. Chris Bostic, deputy director of public policy at Action on Smoking and Health, told the Atlantic that these studies could be dismissed entirely and that PMI’s claims that fighting for a smoke-free future is “a public relations stunt absurd”. (At this moment, in 2019, PMI was not advocating for a ban on cigarettes.)

Health Line reported in April 2021 than two recent studies published in Thorax found evidence that heat does not burn Tobacco products can be almost as dangerous as cigarettes, causing endothelial dysfunction and damage to the lining of blood vessels, and claims that the product can help quit smoking may be exaggerated as users of the devices can be less likely to quit than conventional smokers. In another 2021 study published in the Harm Reduction Journal, the researchers found that interviews with 30 current and former IQOS users who had smoked or quit in the past two years showed that they generally thought the device was “less harmful than smoking but not without risk. , although there is great uncertainty “.

According to the Guardian, anti-tobacco activists and scientists urged the public not to buy PMI’s marketing as it tries to pay its entry into areas of the pharmaceutical industry related to lung health, for example by making an offer of $ 1.38 billion and more (£ 1 billion) for asthma inhaler maker Vectura and $ 820 million by buying Fertin Pharma, which manufactures nicotine gum. In 2019, PMI went so far as to launch a life insurance company called Reviti, which would offer discounts to smokers who have switched to electronic cigarettes like IQOS.

Executive Director of Cancer Research Ian Walker told The Telegraph not to trust PMI as it positions itself “as part of the solution to a smoke-free world, while continuing to sell and promote aggressively lethal cigarettes in the world “.

“The industry has a long history of subverting tobacco control policies for its own financial gain, both in the UK and globally, and it is therefore crucial to protect the public health of its special interests,” said Walker added.