Leading tobacco companies are moving away from cigarettes toward safer, non-combustible products. But ironically, anti-smoking crusaders continue to block efforts to provide consumers with safer alternatives, argues UK-based consumer advocate Martin Cullip of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

In September, Reuters reported on the decision by tobacco and nicotine products manufacturer Swedish Match to sell its US cigar business to shareholders and list it on the stock market.

The deal is expected to be completed next year and would mean the company becomes the world’s first fully non-combustible tobacco company.

This has not come about by accident, Swedish Match had already stopped making traditional cigarettes and in the future will only market snus (a significantly less harmful oral tobacco product), and tobacco-free nicotine pouches, both of which deliver nicotine to the consumer by being placed under the lip instead rather than combustion. Research indicates snus has helped Sweden to have the lowest smoking rates and tobacco-related diseases in Europe.

This could be the future as consumers see the emergence of an entirely non-combustible tobacco industry.

Non-combustible aspirations met with mistrust

Another major tobacco company, Philip Morris International (PMI) certainly thinks that a non-combustible future is attainable. PMI has been marketing under the banner of “Unsmoking” across the world for some time now.

The company regularly speaks of a desire to one day abandon combustible cigarette sales in favour of reduced-risk nicotine delivery products including e-cigarettes and heated tobacco. In July, PMI even went so far as to say that they plan to cease cigarette sales in Britain within 10 years.

Unfortunately, the aspirations of both companies have been met with mistrust, rather than applause, by the public health community. The counterargument is that “Big Tobacco” can never be trusted and that safer nicotine products are merely a ploy to increase nicotine usage and, consequently, further use of traditional combustible cigarettes.

PMI detractors call foul and point to the fact that they sell a vast number of cigarettes in low- and middle-income countries where harm reduction in the field of tobacco use is not as well understood compared to developed nations.

For example, a recent report found that smoking prevalence in Canada, France, New Zealand, and the UK dropped twice as fast as the global average due to policies that have embraced encouraging smokers to switch to safer alternatives.

Tobacco regulations matter

It is true that within the nature of the market, that regulations matter. Researchers at Tobacco Asia quizzed major tobacco company executives in September 2021 to ask if they foresaw a move towards less hazardous nicotine products in their future business plans. 

They were upbeat about the potential for traditional cigarette sales in the near future. The countries in which the companies surveyed operate are far less accepting of harm reduction, with reduced risk products facing crippling regulatory burdens.

One tobacco company executive was very relaxed about their future sales of combustible tobacco and spoke as if anti-smoking activists and government policymakers are their unwitting allies in continuing to sell cigarettes. Indeed, the executive lauded an increase in taxes on non-combustibles expecting that the “price differential between non-combustibles and combustibles” would be closing as a result.

Should safer products be taxed in a similar fashion to harmful combustible cigarettes, the executive noted that “price will become less of a consumer driver.”

Anti-smoking crusaders blocking safer nicotine products

It’s incredible that those who claim to wish to see less smoking in the world are – due to tax policies they promote – useful to the future profits of the combustible tobacco trade in many countries. When considering whether there could be an entirely non-combustible tobacco industry in the future, it is difficult to discount the tobacco control community as a major obstacle to it happening.

If regulations and restrictions make safer products unappealing, smokers won’t switch, and they will continue smoking far more harmful combustible cigarettes.

David Sweanor, an adjunct law professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada and tobacco control advocate for over 40 years sees a dichotomy between harm reduction in tobacco compared to other industry sectors. In fact, Sweanor noted that snus was being advanced “around the same time [the company’s] sister company Volvo was embarking on automobile risk reduction efforts.”

While “Volvo was lauded for its leadership,” Swedish Match has faced “bans, slurs, and misinformation about snus.” Not to mention snus “has the potential to dwarf the millions of lives saved through automobile harm reduction.”

It is a weird case of irony as anti-smoking crusaders are seemingly leading tobacco companies toward only selling harmful combustible cigarettes – despite the efforts of the company to move to tobacco harm reduction products, including e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, and snus.

Policymakers should be wary of these anti-tobacco zealots that are seemingly ensuring that safer products are rendered a less appealing option for consumers, at least in the short term. 

Martin Cullip is the International Fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance’s Consumer Center and is based in South London, UK.