Philip Morris International, the big tobacco company behind such cigarette brands as Marlboro and Virginia Slims, plans to stop selling cigarettes in the United Kingdom by the year 2030.
The company revealed its plans to cease cigarette sales in the U.K. during an interview with the Daily Star, an interview in which the company’s director of corporate affairs for the UK and Ireland, Mark MacGregor, said that 2030 “feels like a realistic timeframe” for the company to stop selling cigarettes.
MacGregor cited an internal company report which apparently showed the possibility of Britain becoming a smoke-free nation by 2030 to be a realistic possibility. He clarified in stating that the internal report didn’t imply that there would be zero smokers in the country by which point, but that “it would be possible” to reach a number “close to zero” come the year 2030.
“The report said it would be possible to get to, not absolutely zero, but close to zero smokers of cigarettes by early 2030.”
He added that this possibility would require current smokers “to either quit or switch to alternatives.” And when it comes to alternatives, PMI has claimed to have spent over $3.5 billion (USD) on researching and developing new products that have already helped some smokers quit. One of these products is the IQOS, which is a heat-not-burn tobacco device that many believe to be less harmful than traditional cigarettes.
By the company’s own account, the IQOS device produces as much as 95 percent less potentially harmful chemicals than the traditional cigarettes they aim to replace. And based on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s preliminary review of the IQOS, it’s likely far less harmful than traditional cigarettes.
So while the company intends on bringing cigarette sales in the UK to a halt, that’s not to say that they don’t intend on making up for the loss in revenue with the sale of newer, smoke-free alternatives such as the IQOS, which is designed to heat sticks of tobacco to the point at which the tobacco is transformed into an aerosol, which may be less harmful than the smoke created by burning normal cigarettes.
In the meantime, the IQOS is being sold in various countries around the world. It was first introduced in Japan in 2014 and has since made its way into various markets as the company expands its offering of the product. In the United States, the FDA is expected to weigh in on whether or not the company can sell its IQOS in the US market – a decision that’s expected to be made within the next few months.
In the United Kingdom, public health services have already started to recommend smoke-free alternatives such as electronic cigarettes to smokers looking to quit. And a new review from Public Health England has found e-cigarettes to be around 95 percent less harmful than conventional cigarettes.
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