Cig­a­rette smok­ers in T&T will one day be able to get their nico­tine fix in a health­i­er, smoke-free way.

That is if Philip Mor­ris’ dream of a smoke-free fu­ture comes true Juan Igna­cio Suarez, the gen­er­al man­ag­er Caribbean at PMI has stat­ed.

PMI has an­nounced that it is com­mit­ting to a ma­jor busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion by mov­ing away from cig­a­rettes and oth­er com­bustible to­bac­co prod­ucts and to­ward health­i­er al­ter­na­tives for nico­tine de­liv­ery

“PMI is lead­ing a trans­for­ma­tion in the to­bac­co in­dus­try to cre­ate a smoke-free fu­ture and ul­ti­mate­ly re­place cig­a­rettes with smoke-free prod­ucts to the ben­e­fit of adults who would oth­er­wise con­tin­ue to smoke, so­ci­ety, the com­pa­ny and its share­hold­er,” the com­pa­ny stat­ed.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion of the na­tion­al bud­get Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said that the gov­ern­ment is of the view that there is a need to curb the con­sump­tion of to­bac­co.

“World­wide, to­bac­co use is the sin­gle largest cause of pre­ventable death, killing around six mil­lion peo­ple every year. To­bac­co use ac­counts for one in 10 adult deaths world­wide and To­bac­co kills up to half of all users,” Im­bert said.

“It is a risk fac­tor for six of the eight lead­ing caus­es of deaths in the world. Unchecked, to­bac­co-re­lat­ed deaths will in­crease to more than eight mil­lion a year by 2030, and 80 per cent of those deaths will oc­cur in the de­vel­op­ing world,” he said,

Im­bert said this sit­u­a­tion brings sig­nif­i­cant so­cial and eco­nom­ic loss­es to in­di­vid­u­als and the wider so­ci­ety.

“We are cur­rent­ly spend­ing $500,000 per year to treat just one lung can­cer pa­tient. For too long, we have had to deal with the neg­a­tive con­se­quences as­so­ci­at­ed with the high con­sump­tion of these prod­ucts,” Im­bert said.

But these com­ments have not scared off PMI.

In fact, they agree with Im­bert.

“We agree and ac­knowl­edge that smok­ing is harm­ful, and the safest op­tion is to quit to­bac­co and nico­tine al­to­geth­er. We would like to re­in­force that our glob­al vi­sion as a com­pa­ny is to build a smoke-free fu­ture based on sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence,” PMI stat­ed.

The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion has es­ti­mat­ed that there will be over a bil­lion smok­ers by 2025.

“With so many peo­ple choos­ing to smoke, it makes sense that they should have bet­ter al­ter­na­tives to cig­a­rettes. Why would any­one de­ny them this op­por­tu­ni­ty?” PMI stat­ed.

“A few im­por­tant steps are need­ed to make this com­mon-sense ap­proach a re­al­i­ty for mil­lions of smok­ers. First, you need to in­vent bet­ter al­ter­na­tives to cig­a­rettes. Sec­ond, these al­ter­na­tives should be ap­peal­ing to adult smok­ers: they should de­liv­er a taste and sen­so­ry ex­pe­ri­ence that leads adult smok­ers, who would oth­er­wise con­tin­ue to smoke, to switch. We can achieve a sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic-health ben­e­fit on­ly when a large num­ber of these smok­ers switch from cig­a­rettes to bet­ter prod­ucts,” PMI stat­ed.

In Ju­ly, the US Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion au­tho­rised the mar­ket­ing of PMI’s “IQOS To­bac­co Heat­ing Sys­tem” as mod­i­fied risk to­bac­co prod­ucts (MRTPs).

The to­bac­co is heat­ed in­stead of be­ing burnt.

The to­bac­co in a cig­a­rette burns at tem­per­a­tures in ex­cess of 600°C, gen­er­at­ing smoke that con­tains high lev­els of harm­ful chem­i­cals.

In­stead, the to­bac­co is heat­ed to much low­er tem­per­a­tures, up to 350°C, with­out com­bus­tion, fire, ash, or smoke.

And, be­cause the to­bac­co is heat­ed and not burned, the lev­els of harm­ful chem­i­cals are said to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced com­pared to cig­a­rette smoke. How­ev­er, THS is not risk-free and de­liv­ers nico­tine which is ad­dic­tive.

“Through the mod­i­fied risk to­bac­co prod­uct ap­pli­ca­tion process, the FDA aims to en­sure that in­for­ma­tion di­rect­ed at con­sumers about re­duced risk or re­duced ex­po­sure from us­ing a to­bac­co prod­uct is sup­port­ed by sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence and un­der­stand­able,” said Mitch Zeller, JD, di­rec­tor of the FDA’s Cen­tre for To­bac­co Prod­ucts.

“Da­ta sub­mit­ted by the com­pa­ny shows that mar­ket­ing these par­tic­u­lar prod­ucts with the au­tho­rised in­for­ma­tion could help ad­dict­ed adult smok­ers tran­si­tion away from com­bust­ed cig­a­rettes and re­duce their ex­po­sure to harm­ful chem­i­cals, but on­ly if they com­plete­ly switch,” Zeller stat­ed.

The FDA said it will close­ly mon­i­tor how IQOS is used by con­sumers to de­ter­mine if these prod­ucts meet this po­ten­tial and do not cause in­creased use among youth.

“It is im­por­tant to note that these prod­ucts are not safe, so peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly young peo­ple, who do not cur­rent­ly use to­bac­co prod­ucts should not start us­ing them or any oth­er to­bac­co prod­uct,” it stat­ed.

The IQOS To­bac­co Heat­ing Sys­tem in­cludes the elec­tron­ic IQOS de­vice that gen­er­ates a nico­tine-con­tain­ing aerosol by heat­ing to­bac­co-filled sticks wrapped in pa­per.

So far the avail­able ev­i­dence states that the IQOS sys­tem heats to­bac­co but does not burn it.

This there­fore sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duces the pro­duc­tion of po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful chem­i­cals.

Sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies have shown that switch­ing com­plete­ly from con­ven­tion­al cig­a­rettes to the IQOS sys­tem sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duces your body’s ex­po­sure to harm­ful or po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful chem­i­cals, it stat­ed.

PMI cur­rent­ly has Marl­boro and L&M cig­a­rettes avail­able in T&T.

The com­pa­ny said it has been mak­ing in­roads in the lo­cal mar­ket.

In an at­tempt to con­strain the smok­ing habit in the coun­try, Im­bert said du­ties will be in­tro­duced as dis­in­cen­tives.

Im­bert said there will be an the in­crease of ex­cise du­ty by 20 per cent on lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured to­bac­co prod­ucts; an in­crease in cus­toms du­ty by 20 per cent on im­port­ed to­bac­co from the Com­mon Mar­ket Ori­gin; and an ad­just­ment of the cus­toms du­ty payable on to­bac­co prod­ucts im­port­ed in­to T&T from ex­tra-re­gion­al sources to have it re­ceive equal treat­ment to that of the com­mon mar­ket.

These mea­sures will take ef­fect from Tues­day, Im­bert stat­ed.

“We un­der­stand and sup­port the ob­jec­tives of the T&T gov­ern­ment to curb smok­ing. How­ev­er, PMI sup­ports rea­son­able tax mea­sures that strike a bal­ance be­tween achiev­ing pub­lic health goals and en­sur­ing that adult con­sumers do not turn to the black mar­ket in­stead of le­gal prod­ucts. Ev­i­dence has shown that dis­pro­por­tion­ate tax in­creas­es could re­sult in the ac­cel­er­a­tion of il­lic­it trade which is al­ready a grow­ing is­sue in T&T,” PMI stat­ed.

“It’s im­por­tant that in­dus­try and au­thor­i­ties work to­geth­er in or­der to avoid the pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­lic­it trade and con­tra­band cig­a­rettes in the mar­kets. That be­ing said, we will work close­ly with au­thor­i­ties to avoid and tack­le the il­lic­it trade,” PMI stat­ed.

Cig­a­rettes are among the most com­mon il­lic­it­ly trad­ed prod­ucts in the world.

And, ac­cord­ing to re­ports, T&T is robbed of $30 mil­lion a year be­cause of this il­lic­it trade.

So as a re­sult there have been strin­gent mea­sures in place to try and deal with this is­sue.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, PMI’s Marl­boro and L&M were be­ing il­le­gal­ly seized by the au­thor­i­ties as a re­sult.

PMI stat­ed, how­ev­er, this sit­u­a­tion has since been rec­ti­fied.