British American Tobacco rejects rival’s call for a ban on smoking

BRITISH American Tobacco has refused to back calls for cigarettes to be banned, saying that outlawing smoking would drive the industry underground.

BAT, the maker of Dunhill and Rothmans cigarettes, will instead advertise vaping and other “non-combustible” products on a billion packets to encourage smokers to quit. The FTSE 100 company also said it was looking at expanding into cannabis as it diversifies away from traditional tobacco products.

Last weekend, the chairman of Marlboro owner Philip Morris International called on the Government to ban cigarettes as part of a “carrot and stick” approach to force smokers to quit. Andre Calantzopoulos said: “Deadlines are important at a certain stage so people [companies] know how much horizon they have. It is not different from what [is being done] with alternative energies or with electric cars [but you need to] stop the confusion that currently exists in the minds of smokers.”

Jack Bowles, BAT chief executive, said an outright ban would not work, citing the example of South Africa, which banned smoking last year during the pandemic. “Consumption did not reduce one bit – and everything becomes illicit,” he said.

Mr Bowles also ruled out following the lead of Philip Morris, which is diversifying into pharmaceutical companies.

It has agreed a £1bn deal to acquire Vectura, a FTSE 250 company that makes drugs to combat smokingrelated diseases.

“Every company is different – and my view is very simple: we are a marketing consumer brand-led company. So our role is to take the consumers that we have in combustibles and … transfer them to new categories.

“Cannabis is one out of many different products that we are looking at.”

The comments came as BAT posted pre-tax profit of £4.4bn on £12.2bn of revenue for the six months to June, both broadly in line with last year.

The number of cigarettes sold increased by 1.8pc to 316bn – equivalent to almost 20,000 sticks a second.

Sales of “new products” such as vaping, heated tobacco and oral tobacco rose 40pc to £883m.