Ordinary cigarettes might soon be a product of the past for Philip Morris International. The head of the world’s largest tobacco company on Wednesday said traditional cigarettes may be replaced before long with modern stand-ins believed to be safer for consumers.
Philip Morris CEO Andre Calantzopoulos was touting one of the tobacco giant’s latest project, the IQOS smokeless cigarette, when he told a BBC Radio interviewer on Wednesday that state-of-the-art alternatives may someday supplant the company’s hallmark product.
“I believe there will come a moment in time where I would say we have sufficient adoption of these alternative products … to start envisaging, together with governments, a phase-out period for cigarettes,” Mr. Calantzopoulos said in an interview on BBC Radio 4.
“I hope this time will come soon,” he added.
Philip Morris currently produces more than 870 billion cigarettes annually and manufacturers Marlboros sold everywhere except the United States. In recent years, the company has begun concentrating on its smokeless cigarette, however, and it has already distributed its IQOS to more than a dozen markets ranging from Japan to Italy with hopes of covering 30 more by the end of next year.
Supported by more than $3 billion of investments during the course of the last decade, Mr. Calantzopoulos’s vision for a smoke-free future might be realized more sooner than later.
“I think we’re transforming our company to achieve this,” he told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “We’re moving very massively our resources and the focus of the organization from our existing traditional business to the new one so, as far as we are concerned, we will do everything we can to accelerate the reaching of consumers to this product.”
“We certainly see a future where Philip Morris no longer will be selling cigarettes in the market,” Martin Inkster, managing director of Philip Morris U.K. and Ireland, told Reuters. He acknowledged accomplishing as much wouldn’t be an easy feat, however, and said phasing out cigarettes entirely will have to be the result of a global effort backed by governments and regulators, Reuters reported.
Philip Morris introduced its smokeless cigarette to the U.K. market this week, but for now, locals can only purchase the product in central London. By heating plant matter to the point of producing a vapor rather than combustion, Philip Morris says users of its smokeless cigarettes get 90 percent fewer toxins than from traditional counterparts.
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