Cigarette giant tests ‘heat not burn’ tobacco
ATLANTA — The nation’s dominant tobacco company, maker of the top-selling Marlboro cigarette, is trying to become the next e-cigarette giant.
And Atlanta is ground zero in the high-stakes experiment.
Altria will begin selling next month a new tobacco product called IQOS, a pen-like electronic device with a sleek battery pack. It hopes to make a splash with an IQOS store at Lenox Square in Atlanta, the company’s first ahead of a national rollout.
The seller of roughly 1 in 2 traditional cigarettes in the U.S. is making the major push as fewer Americans light up and more experiment with vaping devices like ecigarettes to get their nicotine fix.
Such gadgets, including Altria’s “heat not burn device,” are less harmful than traditional cigarettes which release toxins through combustion. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the country, killing 480,000 a year.
But there’s plenty of debate swirling around e-cigarettes that create vapor but no combustion. It’s still unclear how much the alternative devices help smokers quit traditional cigarettes. At the same time, vaping gadgets are hooking a new generation of young people on nicotine.
Less harmful also doesn’t mean harmless. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday it is investigating more than 150 potential cases of severe lung illness associated with vaping in 16 states. Symptoms include coughing, difficulty breathing and fatigue.
IQOS differs from e-cigarettes already on the market because it contains tobacco rather than liquid nicotine or nicotine salt. The product includes a heating blade that warms a tobacco stick and releases a vapor with the taste of tobacco.
Altria is marketing IQOS in the U.S. in a partnership deal with tobacco giant Philip Morris International, which owns the rights to Marlboro overseas. Philip Morris International invested $3 billion in developing IQOS and has introduced it in more than 30 markets around the world. Altria spokesman David Sutton said IQOS will target adult smokers, not children or non-smokers, who want to continue using tobacco.
E-cigarettes and other nicotine delivery systems have grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade in the U.S. and abroad.
Cigarette use in the U.S. has fallen to record lows among adults and teens, even though Americans haven’t exactly kicked the deadly habit. Some 34.3 million adults still smoke in the U.S., or 14 percent of the adult population.
A surge in vaping among U.S. teens, though, has health authorities concerned. Use of e-cigarettes by high-school students soared from 1.5 percent in 2011 to 20.8 percent in 2018, according to the CDC. Among 12th graders, 37 percent reported vaping in 2018, according to the National Institutes of Health.