Kingsley Wheaton

British American Tobacco’s (BAT) Chief Marketing Officer Kingsley Wheaton called for meaningful change in the way that global tobacco and nicotine policies are developed. He stressed the need for a United Nations-style “whole of society” approach to policy development and emphasized the benefits that this more inclusive tobacco harm reduction approach could deliver. BAT’s purpose, he said, is to build “a better tomorrow” by reducing the health impacts of its business.

Earlier this year, the company announced a bold aim: to have 50 million consumers of noncombustible products by 2030. To this end, BAT has invested substantially in “a range of vibrant new noncombustible categories for adult consumers,” according to Wheaton. Its portfolio of potentially reduced-risk products now comprises vapor, tobacco-heating and modern oral offerings.

Innovation is focused not only on products but also on how BAT engages with consumers. Wheaton said the company has rapidly adopted new technologies and digital capabilities in consumer markets. In the U.S., for example, BAT recently launched a vapor subscription service. After just three months, subscribers accounted for half of the company’s U.S. e-commerce revenue.

BAT’s new products have clearly resonated with consumers. In 2019, noncombustibles reached 10 percent of group revenues, with the growth in volume and value shares continuing to accelerate in all three categories. Just five years after launching Vype in the U.K., nearly a third of BAT’s revenue in that market is now from vapor products. In Japan, Glo now accounts for nearly half of the group’s business.

However, said Wheaton, growth would have been even more dramatic had more policymakers around the world supported the company’s new category development with proportionate, risk-based regulation. “Many significant markets remain in ‘regulatory lock,’” he said.

The central question, according to Wheaton, is how to accelerate acceptance of tobacco harm reduction as a genuine public health policy—just as it is recognized within the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “This is not a debate of us versus them but rather about evidence, education and the science underpinning tobacco harm reduction,” he said.

Wheaton insisted the industry should be part of the debate. Worldwide, 1.1 billion people consume tobacco and nicotine products. “To exclude manufacturers from that conversation is like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face,” he said.

Yet the WHO continues to believe that the tobacco industry cannot be a partner in effective tobacco control, advocating for tobacco companies to be excluded from any dialogue with government. Wheaton called this a paradox. “How can this approach and Article 5.3 of the FCTC realistically be implemented when the largest cigarette manufacturer on earth is wholly owned by a WHO member state?” he said, referring to the treaty’s provision against tobacco industry influence on policymaking and the fact that the China National Tobacco Corp. is a state monopoly.

“We need a system that acknowledges the expertise and the ambition of companies like BAT to deliver a better tomorrow—one that is clear about harm caused by smoking yet recognizes more holistically and consistently where the real public health gains can be made, by actively supporting consumer choice and the role of tobacco harm reduction,” said Wheaton.

Despite the challenges, Wheaton was confident that role of combustible products in BAT’s business would continue to decline. “People will gradually forget what the ‘t’ in BAT stands for,” he predicted. The company’s goal is to meet the consumer needs that combustible cigarettes historically satisfied—socialization, connectivity, concentration and relaxation. “Those needs can be met by alternative nicotine solutions in many ways, so we’ll see a burgeoning of innovation and categories as we grasp how to meet those underlying consumer needs that smoking has historically met.”