Winking in the dark

Philip Morris International believes that South Africa’s proposed tobacco regulations will create an impediment to its plan to phase out its cigarettes in favor of less risky alternative products, according to a story by Nick Hedley at businesslive.co.za.
PMI has said that, ultimately, it wants to replace all its cigarettes with smoke-free alternative products such as electronic cigarettes and heat not burn tobacco products.
However, the company said if the proposed Control of Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Bill went ahead in its current form, it would restrict the communication and marketing of all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes and products such as IQOS.
The bill includes also provisions that would require tobacco products to be sold in standardized packaging and that would ban point-of-sale advertising and displays.
Marcelo Nico, Philip Morris’s MD for Southern Africa, was quoted as saying that the bill’s provisions could mean that consumers never got to know about new-generation products such as IQOS, which produce “90 percent less of the dangerous components” produced by traditional, combustible cigarettes.
“What we encourage government to do, and it’s in the submissions we made on the draft bill, is to separate the combustion burning of tobacco versus smokeless products like IQOS – they should be treated differently because this is part of the solution.”
The seven-million smokers in SA “should be given an alternative”, Nico told Business Day, adding that “progressive governments” in other countries had focused their regulations on harm reduction rather than blanket bans.