Technology and innovation is what is driving the world. This has help multi-national companies to survive while introducing products that are not harmful to the environment and help in customer retainership.
While the world is talking about a smoke-free society, companies are making multi-billion-dollar investments in smoke-free alternatives.
It was gathered that Philip Morris International, a leading global establishment, employ almost 80,000 people, including more than 1500 scientists, engineers, and technicians, who are united in helping in delivering a smoke-free future.
Even though their are targets that by 2025, most cigarettes products will be smoke-free, about 2,500 patents have been granted for the Philip Morris International (PMI’s) smoke-free technologies.
Smoke-free products are now available in more than 70 markets around the globe, with more than 25 million adult smokers around the world using PMI smoke-free alternatives, out of which more than 18 million have made the switch and stopped smoking.
It was gathered that PMI’s smoke-free vision is being realized with about 35% of net revenue now coming from smoke-free products.
Are Nigerians ready for this global innovation and changes?
Cigarettes were first introduced in the United States in the early 19th century. Before this, tobacco was used primarily in pipes and cigars, by chewing, and in snuff.
It was gathered that by the time of the civil war, cigarette use had become more popular. Federal tax was first imposed on cigarettes in 1864.
In Nigeria, over 40 civil society groups, legal practitioners and public health advocates had at one time stormed the Nigerian Parliament, the Senate and presented their memorandum in support of the National Tobacco Control Bill, which will also allow for innovation and smoke-free products.
They were invariably calling for a smoke-free products that are not harmful to the environment and the people.
With these campaign, Nigeria smoking rate for 2020 was 3.70%, a 0.2% decline from 2019. The smoking rate for 2019 was 3.90%, a 0% increase from 2018. The smoking rate for 2018 was 3.90%, a 0.8% decline from 2015. The smoking rate for 2015 in Nigeria was 4.70%, a 1.2% decline from 2010.
Pundits say the decline was as a result of the campaign but are they preparing for the smoke-free products that are now available and might dominate every market by 2025?
The questions many kept asking is whether the smokeless products are prohibition against health?
At a bi-annual technovation event organized by Philip Morris Internatonal (PMI) in its Research and Development headquarters in Neuchatel, Switzerland, it was gathered that there is a transformative operation by some companies to become a “majority smoke-free business by 2025.”
Philip Morris Internatonal for example, has spent over $10 billion in Research and Development (R&D).
At the event held on May 9th, 2023, with media coverage worldwide, it was gathered that about 26 million smokers have switched to PMI’s smoke-free alternatives and have stopped smoking.
“We plan to reach 40 million by 2025,” the President SFP Inhaled Products and Chief Consumer Officer at Philip Morris Internatonal, Stefano VolpeV, said.
She said in spite of these results being praised by the company, they still struggle in some regions and countries where those alternatives are simply banned.
“The leading opponent to the tobacco industry is the World Health Organization which, in its treaty, (the first global public health treaty) states that “it provides a global response to a global problem – namely, the tobacco epidemic. It is an evidence-based treaty that reaffirms all people’s right to the highest standard of health.”
Investors believed that the international organization, WHO considers everything that comes from the tobacco industry a threat to health.
A Senior Vice-president for External Affairs at the PMI, Grégoire Verdeaux pointed out that International Treaty on Tobacco is: Prevention; Cessation, Taxation, adding that it is just a fallacy.
“As a specialist, there are very few examples showing that you actually regulate consumption by taxation. But something that is also in the treaty is another pillar, the fourth one, which states that if you have done all of this (prevention, cessation), and it didn’t work, you should try harm reduction which is basically offering adults smokers who cannot quit, less harmful products,” Verdeaux said, referring to the smoke-free products.
He said WHO remains inflexible on smokeless products, stating that it is what the organization reaffirmed at the last Conferences of the Parties (COP).
“It recommended Parties to priotize measures that prevent initiation of novel and emerging tobacco products, protect people from exposure to their emissions, prevent health claims being made for such products, avert their promotion, regulate the contents and disclosure of the contents of novel and emerging tobacco products, and regulate, including restriction or prohibition of the manufacturing, importation, distribution, presentation, sale and use of novel and emerging tobacco products, taking into account a high level of protection for human health.”
For Tommaso Di Giovanni, this inflexibility is in reality an ideology mager and not favorable at all for the next coming COP, which will take place in November 2023 in Panama.
“Unfortunately, the WHO is looking at these products through the lenses of ideology. The WHO leadership on several occasions clearly said that their goal is to fight the industry. But fighting the industry is not what is in the statute of the WHO,” he said.
In WHO statute, he said the mandate is clearly stated as improvement of the health of people who smoke.
“That is in their statute. They should go back to their original goal, look with neutral eyes at evidence and practices of other industries, allow for dialogue and leverage science for the good of people,” Giovanni said.
For PMI’s CEO, Jacek Olczak, there is a need to bring coherence to the table.
He said there are countries where smokeless products are simply banned while cigaretes are allowed.
“What exactly are we trying to achieve? Because we know what cigaretes can cause and what smokeless products cannot cause. So now, if you look at the statistics of the market where those products have been present for 5, 7 or more years, you see a decline in the rate going to 30, 35% of the total cigarete market,” Olczak said.
Smoking prevalence has indeed decreased in some countries such as Australia, England, Japan, and New Zealand. Those are countries where regulation is favorable to market these new products.
A number of organizations, such as Public Health England, (which operates within the British Department of Health and Social Care) have issued studies in the last few years affirming, “that ecigareges were 95% safer than combusible cigareges”.
Their research shows that the level of dangerous toxins that are responsible for causing disease are substantially lower in these products than in traditional cigareges.
“In LMICs and Africa more specifically, smoking prevalence has reached higher rates these last years,” Olczak said adding that it remains clear for many that there is a possibility to lower that rate by welcoming those alternatives, which he said is the smoke-free products.
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