“We must certainly see a future in which Philip Morris will no longer sell cigarettes on the market”: words that caused a stir, especially when spoken by Martin Inkster, Managing Director of Philip Morris UK & Ireland. What is certain is that the largest tobacco company globally is seriously thinking about the future of the sector, and not from today: Philip Morris International has been investing for over a decade in a portfolio of products with the potential to represent a low-risk alternative to cigarette smoke.
Among the platforms developed by the Group, there is IQOS, launched a few days ago in the United Kingdom (hence the declarations of Inkster) after the introduction since 2014 in the two pilot markets Japan and Italy, then in Switzerland and in some cities in Russia, Germany, Portugal, Ukraine, Romania. More than a million people, in the countries where it is sold, have already switched from cigarettes to this product which is nothing more than a system that heats tobacco instead of burning it, generating an aerosol which releases a tobacco flavour thus maintaining many of the sensory and ritual aspects linked to the smoke of a traditional cigarette, but without combustion.
The HeatSticks, produced exclusively for IQOS, contain a blend of tobaccos processed with cutting-edge technologies. I am entirely produced in Italy, in the industrial area of Bologna, the result of an investment of around 500 million euros, where the Philip Morris International group inaugurated the first factory in the world of potentially reduced-risk products last September. IQOS, which in Philip Morris's programs will try to replace traditional cigarettes over time, is a system with a high rate of technological innovation: in fact, the product, which is not an electronic cigarette but like e-cigs, falls into the category of products without combustion around 400 world-renowned scientists and engineers work.
Philip Morris International's (PMI) scientific research on IQOS, has been published in a leading peer-reviewed scientific journal and provides data on the harm reduction potential of the first reduced-risk product on the market. Published results show that Iqos vapor contains on average 90-95% lower levels of potentially harmful substances – excluding nicotine – than smoke from cigarettes designed for scientific research, and therefore this vapor is significantly less toxic than smoke. of cigarette.
So can we start thinking about a future without cigarettes? “We know that our products,” namely cigarettes, “cause harm to consumers, and the only correct response for a company is to find and market less harmful products. That's our goal,” he said the managing director of Philip Morris International, Andre Calantzopoulos. Meanwhile, after the launch last November 30 in the United Kingdom, with the opening of a store in central London, the product will be marketed in 20 countries by the end of 2016.
