The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Can the world quit smoking?
A few years ago, I framed a speech in Washington, D.C., around an eternal, hopeful message: Change is possible.
My anecdotal evidence was a reflection on my teen years, circa 1980, when classmates would sneak drags on cigarettes in the high school driveway as hearses departed from the neighboring funeral home.
The imagery was enough to persuade me never to try a cigarette. Subsequent generations listened to the drumbeat of the perils of tobacco. Smoking declined dramatically, proof of the possibility of genuine social change.
We've come a long way, baby, but there's still a lot of work to be done to snuff out smoking.
Now, in case you've missed it from past columns, I hate smoking (even more than I hate Imagine Dragons). It doesn't help that my eyes were crimson rings during my high school and college years because I'm somewhat allergic to smoke.
Which made me either the worst or best possible guest for a meeting with leaders from the world's biggest tobacco company, Philip Morris International. As PMI prepares to relocate offices to the former UBS headquarters in downtown Stamford this October, company leaders wanted to introduce themselves as a new neighbor and discuss the future of the industry they say they are trying to revolutionize by phasing out cigarettes. I was joined by fellow Hearst Connecticut Media Editorial Board member Hugh Bailey and Staff Writer Paul Schott.
When you work in Big Tobacco, you know what's coming. André Calantzopoulos, executive chairman of the board for PMI, asks the “obvious” question before we get to it.
“Now, I don't want to anticipate your questions but I often get the question, ‘Why don't you get rid of cigarettes?' ” he says. “... I don't think that makes economic sense because someone else will sell them.”
Unfortunately, that would certainly prove true even if PMI can gradually get people to kick old habits with products such as the sleek IQOS, a “heat, not burn” device that contains tobacco and is pitched to international consumers as being
Four decades later, it’s a different industry. His company is experimenting with developing technology to keep kids from using company devices. And he’s busy trying to convince the world that delivering a smoke-free future is “not a PR exercise.”
safer than vaping.
While I wouldn't know which end of a cigarette to light, Calantzopoulos' musings about the challenges ahead are informed by 35 years in the industry. As he talks about alternative products, he mimes using them. A reference to Snus, for example, inspires him to demonstrate how it is placed behind the upper lip. Snus is made by Swedish Match, a smaller oral nicotine rival PMI is in the process of buying for $16 billion.
“We should not forget that the most important thing is to convince the smokers to move out of cigarettes,” he says. “Which may sound like an easy task but is the most complicated task of all tasks.”
PMI's harshest critics (including the World Health Organization) insist the whole campaign is a smoke screen, a rebranding posing as a public health initiative. Calantzopoulos insists “We took the decision to do it before someone else does it to us. Now the industry has to follow.”
One of the reasons Connecticut won the day when PMI decided to move from New York was because officials here were more “welcoming,” he says. In return, 150 employees will relocate to Stamford, with a promise of more to follow. Americas Region President Deepak Mishra hints about the company “giving back to the community significantly.”
Calantzopoulos and Mishra are joined by Strategic and Scientific Communications Vice President Moira Gilchrist and U.S. Communications Director Corey Henry. They stay on point, and don't blink at queries about dealing with a lack of trust from the public. They repeatedly express in different ways the “final push” is to get cigarettes off the market.
Gilchrist uses an intriguing phrase, characterizing “the right audience” as “adults who would otherwise continue to smoke.”
There are missteps. Their business cards bear the slogan “UNSMOKE YOURMIND” which just seems like shaky grammar and an invite to another “Matrix” reboot. And they lean hard on the notion that “you don't have to trust us, just listen to the Food and Drug Administration.”
But Calantzopoulos' charm is undeniable as a face of the cigarette company that has pledged to rid the world of its signature product. He teases himself before we can when he refers to the town next door as “Greenwich Village.” And he briefly fantasizes about goals in the alcohol industry, “where the Holy Grail was to find a solution you can drink, but you cannot get drunk.”
“We even had R and D look into it,” he jokes.
So maybe he doesn't quite have as firm a grasp on the popular appeal of alcohol.
He resembles a cheerier Eric Clapton without a Stratocaster, with a dusting of a beard and hair the color of ashes from a Chesterfield.
When I nudge about his origins in the industry, he reaches back even further to his childhood, when his dad was a Marlboro man in his native Greece and his grandmother would admonish his grandfather to stop smoking because “this thing will kill you.”
After studying electrical engineering, Calantzopoulos was braced to fulfill required military service when Greece changed its requirements. So he entertained offers from Motorola, Hewlett-Packard and Arthur Andersen, all of which turned out to have much less reliable futures than PMI.
Philip Morris offered him a gig in business development and planning, precisely the transition he was seeking. Other things about the job were attractive. It was in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he attended school, and where his girlfriend at the time was living.
“The army, dad, a girl and a familiar place,” I jest. All logical motivators.
Four decades later, it's a different industry. His company is experimenting with developing technology to prevent kids from using company devices. And he's busy trying to convince the world that delivering a smoke-free future is “not a PR exercise.”
“It's something everybody should be doing,” Calantzopoulos says.
In an idealized version of this corporate strategy, Connecticut would one day be able to claim a role in creating a healthier world. Not to go all Pollyanna on Big Tobacco, but let's not pretend there won't always be a market for cigarettes.
Change is possible, but it has its limits. To think otherwise is just smoking your mind.