Tobacco exec: Device future bright

Philip Morris International Inc. expects regulators will gradually become more open to alternatives to cigarettes even after more than 27 governments have prohibited next-generation smokeless devices.

“Eventually, countries will reverse gear,” Chief Executive Officer Andre Calantzopoulos said in an interview with Bloomberg News in Tokyo. “‘I don’t think it’s reasonable to essentially condemn your population to only smoke cigarettes when there are vastly different alternatives.”

Facing global pressure on its traditional business, the Marlboro maker is banking on a shift to noncigarette products such as its iQos tobacco-heating device, which gives users a nicotine buzz without combustion. Philip Morris’s CEO said he expects regulators will heed the example of Japan, a market where an upsurge in smoking alternatives has accompanied a 20 percent reduction in cigarette consumption in the past three years.

“Japan should be very proud that was achieved,” he said. Traditional restrictions on smoking would have taken 15 to 20 years to have a similar effect, according to the CEO.

Calantzopoulos said he still expects the Food and Drug Administration to give the go-ahead to sell iQos, which is different from the category of e-cigarettes, in the U.S. this year. The U.K. and New Zealand are among other countries that have been adopting more accommodating positions to cigarette alternatives.

Many countries have gone the opposite way amid the outcry by anti-smoking groups, which say that Big Tobacco is trying to get people hooked on a new type of addiction. Earlier this month, Hong Kong announced a ban on electronic cigarettes as well as “heatnot-burn” devices like iQos, joining markets such as Australia.

As Philip Morris conducts clinical trials to try to prove iQos poses fewer health risks than smoking, almost 6 million people have already switched to the device. Shipments of the sticks of tobacco used in iQos will more than double to 100 billion by 2021, the Marlboro maker forecast last month.

There are two main types of next-generation devices. Electronic cigarettes don’t contain tobacco and instead vaporize a liquid form of nicotine. Heat-not-burn cigarettes heat tobacco without reaching the temperature of combustion, which is about 600 degrees Celsius.

In the U.S., the FDA recently clamped down on ecigarette makers for selling to underage consumers. Calantzopoulos said he doesn’t expect that to hurt iQos’s chances of getting approval, saying that the reason for the underage e-cigarette crackdown is that the FDA lacked authority to regulate the electronic devices before they went on sale.

“It’s actually a positive thing that the FDA is acting,” the CEO said.

Philip Morris is also requesting the FDA to allow it to sell iQos with a label saying it poses a reduced-risk designation, which would be the first of its kind. Calantzopoulos said that decision will take longer than getting approval for sale, which he expects this year.

Calantzopoulos made the comments as he visited Tokyo to launch two new iQos devices.