While global sales of traditional cigarettes have been declining, those of alternatives like electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products or HTPs has been growing.
According to data from London-based market research company Euromonitor International, while the combustible cigarettes market is expected to record a $7.7 billion loss by 2021, sales of products of HTPs, also called heat-not-burn products, is seen growing by $13.2 billion.
Heated tobacco products heat actual tobacco leaves as an alternative form of delivering nicotine to the user without the toxic by-products associated with burning traditional cigarettes. E-cigarettes, on the other hand, heat liquids that may or may not contain nicotine, as well as some flavorings and other ingredients.
Based on 2016 data gathered by Euromonitor, global sales of HTPs reached more than $2 billion, a 171 percent growth compared to 2015. Japan was the largest heated tobacco market, accounting for a 96-percent share of global HTPs sales.
Nine of the top 10 countries for heated tobacco sales are based in Europe, representing the fastest-growing region in the world (with Western Europe registering a 634 percent increase and Eastern Europe, 327 percent). Germany was the second-largest heated tobacco market in 2016, but Euromonitor expects the US to take Germany’s place by 2021.
A recent post from the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association quoted a US Food and Drug Association review in July 2020 which concluded that one HTP heats tobacco, but does not burn it, significantly reducing the production of harmful, as well as potentially harmful chemicals.
Studies by tobacco companies on their HNB products reported a reduction of more than 90 percent in a wide range of toxins (as found in the HNB aerosol) compared to cigarette smoke.
Meanwhile, one independent study found that an HTP emitted substantially lower carbonyl emissions compared to cigarettes. Carbonyl such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acrolein are among the most toxic compounds emitted in tobacco cigarette smoke and have been linked to respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, and cancer formation.
The group also cited a review by Public Health England which revealed that HNB products, while safer, deliver similar levels of nicotine to the user and reduce the urge to smoke.
The review noted that HNB products appear to help many smokers to quit smoking in countries where they are available, like in Japan and Korea, where there has been substantial reduction in smoking rates due to substitution by HNB products.
Meanwhile, a recent article by Reason Foundation (reason.org) referred to a study by the American Cancer Society examining one HNB brand’s effects on the Japanese cigarette market from 2014 to 2018, and concluded that the product likely reduced cigarette sales in Japan. From the first quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2021, Japanese cigarette sales plummeted by 43 percent.
In many countries, the sale of HTPs, HNBs and e-cigarettes is being encouraged by governments as an alternative to traditional cigarette smoking as a health-related measure. The encouragement can come in different forms, including less regulation, as a harm reduction initiative.
The same article noted that while HTPs are working as intended, driving down cigarette sales with little appeal to the youth, the opportunity that these products present to reduce deaths from smoking could be jettisoned in favor of other goals that are less focused on health outcomes.
In the Philippines, a recent report showed that almost a quarter of a million Filipinos are already using smoke-free alternatives, and 59 percent of legal-age Filipino smokers are looking to switch to smoke-free alternatives.
Unfortunately, in the Philippines, the government continues to turn a blind eye on all these studies and refuses to look at HTPs and e-cigarettes based on harm-reduction considerations in terms of regulations, including taxation, for highly suspect reasons.
In a congressional hearing earlier this year, the Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) admitted that it applied for a grant and received money from a foreign anti-tobacco organization to fund the drafting of vape and heated tobacco policy. Funded by Bloomberg Philantrophies, the Bloomberg Initiative to reduce tobacco use funds activities to promote freedom from smoking and reducing tobacco use in low and middle income countries, including the Philippines, according to the World Health Organization.
The House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability has asked the Commission on Audit to conduct a full audit on the money received by the Philippine FDA from the Bloomberg Initiative to draft policies regulating vaping in the country and has recommended the review of the FDA Act with regard to the receipt of grants and donations from local and international sources, as well as the law’s implementing rules to reflect the realities that a grant may influence the grantee.
A new research by the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) has confirmed that Philippine NGOs were among also those which received millions of dollars from the anti-tobacco Bloomberg and Gates foundations to lobby the government for a ban on vaping in the country.
According to CAPHRA Philippine representative Clarisse Virgino, who conducted the research, while many independent Asia-Pacific countries are delivering progressive and successful tobacco harm reduction policies and programs, big money and influence, mostly American, are conspiring to demonize their work.
The research also found that Bloomberg Philanthropies funded the Data for Health Initiative at the University of Melbourne and Pakistan’s Tobacco Control Cell (TCC) which aims to gather statistics on tobacco-related deaths worldwide.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, through its Institute for Global Tobacco Control, also receives funding from Bloomberg and is a partner of the World Health Organisation, which is one of five partner organizations funded by the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, according to the research. Through its Institute for Global Tobacco Control, the Bloomberg School of Public Health serves as the academic arm of the initiative, conducting research, evaluation and capacity building to support the passage, implementation and enforcement of tobacco control policies and interventions. The institute, which explicitly opposes vaping, is a partner of the WHO.
Meanwhile, the TCC, an attached agency of Pakistan’s Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, received a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to fund the development and implementation of the National Action Plan on Tobacco Interference, as well as grants to fund projects aimed at strengthening the country’s existing tobacco control interventions.
The local FDA has issued an administrative order for the regulation of HTPs and vapor products effective Jan. 14 this year with full enforcement on May 24, 2022, but it has been observed that the order is even more restriction that the regulations for traditional cigarettes, thus discouraging smokers from switching to less harmful alternatives.
The Nicotine Consumers Union of the Philippines, through its head Anton Israel, has said that the FDA is an agency tasked with drafting regulations on safer alternatives to combustible cigarettes, not to ban their use. He emphasized that restricting the use and sale of these innovative products is equivalent to a ban which would be contrary to the intent of the laws.
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