Author: Staff Writer

Making its Mark

Photo: Poda Holdings
By addressing the shortcomings of existing products, Poda Holdings is pushing heat-not-burn technology to new levels.
By Marissa Dean
Sales of heat-not-burn (HnB) products have increased dramatically in recent years. In Japan—the world’s largest market for these products—HnB has helped drive down traditional cigarette consumption to unprecedented lows. Due to the absence of combustion, HnB devices release significantly lower levels of harmful toxicants than traditional cigarettes, allowing smokers to move down the risk continuum while continuing to derive the satisfaction they seek from nicotine.
Globally, the HnB market is dominated by large companies, such as Philip Morris International, BAT and Japan Tobacco International, along with regional players, such as KT&G. But smaller companies, too, are eager to make their mark. By addressing what they perceive to be the shortcomings of existing devices, they are slowly but surely claiming their share of this promising category.
Poda Holdings is one such company. The firm was founded in January 2015 with the goal of creating the best HnB product ever made, according to CEO Ryan Selby. “Many adult smokers have been seeking smoke-free products that have the potential to reduce the risks associated with their smoking habit,” he said. “By focusing on their wants and needs, we were able to identify some key components missing from the heat-not-burn industry.”
The company offers an HnB tobacco-free product called Beyond Burn. “Our flagship Beyond Burn Poda Pods contain a unique tobacco-free blend of pelletized tea leaves infused with synthetic nicotine, which have been expertly crafted to mimic the sensorial experience of traditional cigarettes without the smoke, without the smell and without the tobacco,” the company explains on its website. The tea leaves (versus tobacco or other substances) provide a stable, consistent and low-cost substrate that is truly tobacco-free for use in the device, according to Poda.

“The closed-ended design allows an incredibly wide variety of substances to be used in our system—something that open-ended systems simply cannot do.”
Ryan Selby, CEO, Poda Holdings
A New, Clean Technology
Poda’s current technology, which took six years to develop, consists of the Beyond Burn Poda Pods and the Beyond Burn heating device. The device features a single button with three temperature settings. It has a fast-charging battery that is capable of heating a full pack of pods on a single charge, and the company plans on launching additional devices across different price points in the future to allow consumers more choices.
“When we looked at the HnB space, it was clear that innovations were happening all around,” said Selby. “We knew that making a product that replicated the sensorial experience of smoking was only half the battle. Being well-versed in the space, we knew that odor and residue buildup in heating devices was a major user pain-point and one that no one had yet solved. In our research, this was one of the primary challenges users faced—a heating device that started out with excellent performance, only to degrade with use, gathering strong odors and requiring extensive cleaning to keep the device operational. This contamination also left flavor residue in the heating devices, limiting the options for switching different flavors and different types of substances. It was our goal to solve that problem as a primary focus, finding a way to keep all the mess contained within each disposable pod.”
The Beyond Burn Poda Pods are considered “zero-cleaning,” meaning that their pod design keeps any potential mess contained within the pod itself, taking away the need for cleaning or maintenance. This also means there is no residual odor in the heating device and no cross-contamination between pods when they are switched. “What sets us apart really boils down to our patented closed-ended pods,” said Selby. “The closed-ended design … allows an incredibly wide variety of substances to be used in our system—something that open-ended systems simply cannot do. Ground plant matter, pellets, sheets, liquids, etc., are all possible in our pods, where our open-ended competitors would have to come up with solutions for each of these material forms individually.”
“Big Tobacco was coming at the challenges in the space with answers that fit their existing manufacturing methods and techniques, and thus they weren’t thinking very far outside the box,” Selby said. “Poda came at the problem from a totally different angle.”
Pods are currently packaged in the company’s facility in China and are packaged in cartons of 200 pods, with each carton containing 10 packs of 20 pods. The current manufacturing capability is over 400,000 pods per month, but the company is currently scaling up production and plans to produce over 10 million pods per month by the end of 2021. “We’ve raised enough capital to scale up our production capabilities to meet initial launch demand, and we have a comfortable runway to execute our launch plans,” said Selby.

Poda Holdings’ Beyond Burn Poda Pods contain a unique tobacco-free blend of pelletized tea leaves infused with synthetic nicotine, which mimic the sensorial experience of traditional cigarettes without the smoke, without the smell and without the tobacco.
Regulation
The absence of tobacco in Poda’s products offers opportunities that are unavailable to tobacco-containing offerings. “The tobacco space is heavily regulated throughout the world, and new reduced-risk and heat-not-burn products face many of the same regulations as cigarettes as well as additional regulations pertaining to products in the vaporization space,” said Selby. “This overlap creates a complex regulatory landscape that is constantly evolving—each country having their own unique framework. Our first offering—our flagship Beyond Burn Poda Pods—contain no tobacco products whatsoever, so they tend to be outside the scope of existing tobacco regulations. As the landscape changes, our closed-ended pods will allow for exploring a multitude of different substance options for tobacco and beyond—allowing Poda to navigate regulatory hurdles in a way many of our competitors aren’t able to.”
While Poda Pods do not currently contain tobacco, the company has opted to file a premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) in the U.S. The PMTA pathway is a long process, with only a handful of applications approved to date, but it is necessary to market deemed tobacco products in the U.S. According to the Food and Drug Administration, deemed tobacco products consist of “electronic nicotine-delivery systems, which include e-cigarettes, e-cigars, e-hookah, vape pens, personal vaporizers and electronic pipes; pipe tobacco; dissolvables; nicotine gels; waterpipe (hookah); cigars; and future tobacco products.”
“We believe that our Beyond Burn Poda Pods are not subject to the PMTA as they contain lab-synthesized synthetic nicotine, no tobacco ingredients whatsoever and, importantly, cannot be used with any other tobacco products,” said Selby. “However, there are a multitude of potential future opportunities for Poda products to be used with tobacco, and so in order to demonstrate our commitment to total compliance with the PMTA, we have begun the PMTA process in the USA for Poda products containing tobacco and tobacco-derived products.”
Poda products contain synthetic nicotine, which is essentially chemically identical to tobacco-derived nicotine but currently outside of the FDA’s remit. Poda chose to use synthetic nicotine because it allows for more control over what goes into the pods. “Synthetic nicotine offers the same satisfaction as tobacco-derived nicotine without the chance of impurities and harmful substances from the tobacco plant contaminating it during the extraction process,” said Selby.
Beyond Burn Poda Pods are currently available in three different flavors with more expected down the line. The company is planning for other content offerings as well, including coffee/caffeine infused products, nicotine-free blends, real tobacco, cannabis/CBD and medicinal herbs. “We envision a family of devices, all designed to work with our pods, regardless of pod contents.”

Thinking Outside the Industry
To better reflect its broad, multisector ambitions, Poda recently announced a new planned corporate structure featuring six subsidiaries—Poda (Tobacco), Poda (Alternatives), Poda (Therapeutics), Poda (THC), Poda (CBD) and Poda (Research and Development). Poda has also filed intellectual property patents (already granted in Canada) for its proprietary technology, brought on new board members and created new positions. Former Juul Canada president, Michael Nederhoff, joined the global advisory board and is consultant to Poda’s management team and the company’s board, assisting with the company’s global expansion. Nicholas Kadysh, former Juul head of corporate affairs, recently joined Poda’s global advisory board as well.
Poda is also thinking beyond consumer goods, entering the medical device market and appointing the company’s first chief medical officer, Jagdeep Gupta. “I am very pleased to have received approval from the board to enter the medical device market and to create the position of chief medical officer for Poda,” wrote Selby in a press release. “In addition to providing exceptional reduced-risk products designed for current adult smokers, Poda is also committed to providing effective smoking cessation products designed to help adult smokers quit smoking.”
“Quitting smoking can be difficult, and the addition of Dr. Gupta as chief medical officer will help Poda to develop medically approved products and treatment strategies designed to provide adult smokers with the tools they need to successfully quit smoking. In addition, there are numerous opportunities for Poda to utilize our intellectual property and related technologies to potentially facilitate the delivery of many different therapeutic molecules by inhalation.”
Gupta later announced that he began clinical trials for Poda’s smoking cessation products. “I have already initiated the process of setting up the first clinical trials related to the efficacy of Poda’s products as smoking cessation tools,” Gupta wrote in a release. “I am currently in the process of setting up a pilot study, which will give us a solid platform for developing strong and effective clinical trials. These clinical trials will be designed to result in the publication of Level 1 evidence in respected medical journals globally if the data provides evidence. The pilot studies will also be designed to establish a scientific basis for the efficacy of Poda’s products as smoking cessation tools and additionally may provide Poda with access to research grants and other funds that can be used for additional studies, clinical trials and validation research.”
In addition to expanding into the medical device industry, Poda signed a supply agreement with Greenbutts, a biodegradable filter manufacturer. “This supply agreement will provide the company with access to 100 percent biodegradable filters for use in our Beyond Burn Poda Pods,” according to Selby. “The inclusion of Greenbutts’ biodegradable filters into our already biodegradable and compostable Poda Pods allows Poda the ability to offer a completely biodegradable and truly compostable heat-not-burn product, something that has never been done in the heat-not-burn tobacco market.”
Gamechanger
Poda has accomplished a lot in the past six years and is now poised to be a potential gamechanger in the heat-not-burn market. A mess-free, zero-cleaning biodegradable product that could reach beyond tobacco and nicotine products seems like it would be a very attractive product for consumers—and it would seem others agree; Poda recently received an order for 500,000 Beyond Burn Poda Pods and 2,000 Beyond Burn Heating Devices, expected to be used during the initial launch in the European market later this year.
Time will tell how this technology impacts the market. Selby, for his part, is confident Poda could change the face of HnB. “I believe that Poda really is the solution the HnB space has been waiting for,” he said.

Marissa Dean joined Tobacco Reporter in the summer of 2018 as a copy editor.Since that time, she has taken on additional responsibilities, including feature writing.Her skills span the publishing industry from layout and design to copy editing to content creation.

January 1, 2022
The Need for Nuance

Photo: Andrey Popov
It’s time for regulators to stop lumping all tobacco products together as being equally risky.
By George Gay
“It’s still difficult for me to understand how the European Commission can claim on the one hand that they want to do everything in their power to fight cancer, including revising tobacco policy, yet on the other hand completely reject the idea of liberalizing regulations for one of the very few products that has shown it can displace cigarettes.”
The above is a quote attributed to the Swedish member of the European Parliament, Sara Skyttedal, as part of a Snusforumet story published on Nov. 19. Skyttedal is clearly frustrated and angry with the commission, and, according to my interpretation of the story, her frustration comes down in part to the fact that while the commission says it wants to reduce the incidence of smoking throughout the EU to the low level at which it stands in Sweden, it is not willing to remove the ban on snus, the product that has largely displaced cigarettes in Sweden but that, for inexplicable reasons, is banned in the EU with the exception of Sweden.
I feel certain Skyttedal is merely making a point: She doesn’t really believe there is a logical conflict in the commission’s position. The apparent conflict is easily resolved by pointing out that while the commission might say it wants to do everything in its power to fight cancer, that is not the case. In fact, this becomes clear later in the story when, talking about the connection between Sweden’s low level of tobacco-related cancers relative to those in the rest of the EU and the fact that Sweden is the only country in the EU where snus is legally available, Skyttedal says the commission sees the connection but is not willing to act on it.
I hate to state the obvious, but I would guess that one of the commission’s hang-ups has to do with tobacco. It can tolerate the idea that nicotine in the form of nicotine-replacement therapy products or even vaping products should be allowed to replace tobacco products, but it cannot bear the idea that tobacco products might be allowed to substitute tobacco products. Tobacco has pariah status; nicotine is somewhere lower on the continuum of the unacceptable.
Let me provide an example. In November, my newspaper ran a story about how, because of the goods transport chaos afflicting the U.K. post-Brexit, there might be a shortage of alcohol this Christmas. This was seen as a negative because, apparently, we cannot celebrate this Christian festival without being off our heads, and despite the fact that such a shortage would probably result in fewer family fights, stomach-pumping hospital visits, drunk driving and all that entails, assaults on hospital accident and emergency staff and even deaths, since alcohol kills.
Imagine, however, if the story had been about a shortage of tobacco at Christmas. This would have been presented as a positive, though it would have caused a number of negative outcomes and almost no positive results, with the exception that a few people might have discovered they were able to quit their habit.
Language Matters
But I digress. Let me return to Skyttedal’s original complaint about the commission’s failure to follow through on its aim to do everything in its power. There are certain categories of phrases that immediately flash warning signs to the effect that what is being said should be taken with a pinch of salt, and one such category comprises those with superlatives. Just think of the phrases “nobody wants to see …” and “everyone agrees that ….” You hear and see such phrases used all the time, but it doesn’t take more than a second’s thought to realize they cannot be correct. It is almost impossible to imagine an instance when nobody or everybody was in favor of something. So when somebody tells you they are doing “everything in their power” to bring about a certain result, you know it’s time to look somewhere else for help.
Language matters, and, to my way of thinking, one of the problems that people who champion tobacco harm reduction have helped to create is down to the fact that they have been too willing to accept and parrot some of the extreme language and figures used by those people also involved in tobacco control but who are opposed to harm reduction. For instance, there has been a willingness to go along with claims of nicotine addictiveness that are clearly unsupportable, even though some health professionals keep this pot simmering by telling smokers they cannot give up nicotine without the support of … yup, there’s a surprise, health professionals.
Probably the ultimate superlative is “smoking kills,” which has become so ingrained that you are mocked if you say you don’t agree with it, but the truth of the matter is that a certain percentage of smokers die of smoking-related diseases, mostly after a long and possibly enjoyable history of smoking. The other smokers die of something else—perhaps of injuries caused by a drunk driver. And, I hate to be downbeat, nonsmokers die too, perhaps of “tobacco-related diseases,” though ones caused by pollution. If they didn’t die, the world would become full up, and the gene pool would lose its vigor.
OK, some will argue the smoking problem is not only about death but about the physical and economic costs of smokers living with medical conditions linked to their habit. But we are all prisoners of the choices we make. I doubt there are many people who reach the age of 50 without carrying some physical ailment linked to something they did when they were young. Some footballers die at relatively young ages having suffered from dementia attributable to their playing football, but few would claim playing football kills. Rather, we try to change the rules of the game and the equipment used to prevent brain damage—we employ harm reduction techniques.

Perhaps it’s time to reconsider what we mean by “smokeless.” After all, some tobaccos are cured using artificial heat—in some cases by burning wood fuel and contributing to deforestation. (Photo: phanasitti)
Distortion is a Problem
On the question of parroting figures, take the annual death toll attributed to tobacco-related diseases. Over the years, it has been increased a number of times, usually in lots of one million, so it now stands at the nicely rounded figure of 8 million. At the same time, the World Health Organization, which has ownership of this figure, has been claiming success in its efforts to prevent the deaths attributed to tobacco. But even given the world’s population has been increasing, it cannot be the case that the figure for tobacco-related deaths keeps leapfrogging this supposed success.
Why is this important? Because by exaggerating the problems caused by tobacco, some sections of tobacco control have been allowed to distort the picture to such an extent that it becomes difficult to sell the idea of tobacco harm reduction. When tobacco is depicted as being “deadly”—a superlative you often see applied to this product—and that depiction is not challenged, it becomes too counterintuitive even for the uncommitted to imagine that the problem caused by tobacco can be significantly reduced by another tobacco product such as snus. Additionally, because too many people have, for a quiet life, gone along with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s airy-fairy idea that e-cigarettes can be “deemed” “tobacco” products, the use of even vaping products as tobacco harm reduction agents can be challenged easily by those who wish to do so.
What we need is honesty. For instance, we need to stop lumping all combustibles together as if the consumption of cigarettes, cigars or pipe tobacco is equally risky. This cannot be the case, especially at a population level. And we have to do the same in respect of smokeless products. For instance, what do we mean by “smokeless”? Are we talking only of the consumption of the final product? Perhaps it’s time we checked out whether some of the tobaccos used in some “smokeless” products are cured using artificial heat—in some cases by burning wood fuel and contributing to deforestation.
It has become fashionable to talk of both individual and population risk, so, in this context, is it OK to reduce the harm caused to individuals by tobacco consumption if the production of the less risky items involves damaging the environment and, by extension, threatening the health of tobacco and nontobacco users alike?
This is a massively complex question, the answer to which would mean a descent into not altogether helpful relativities. One thing seems clear to me, however. If you drew up a continuum of environmental risk caused by tobacco and nicotine products, you would wind up with a picture somewhat different to the continuum of individual consumer risk caused by tobacco and nicotine products, which we are more used to seeing. But one thing would remain pretty much the same. Smokeless products, such as nicotine pouches, snus and chewing tobacco, would be the stand-out products when it comes to reduced environmental risks. What would change, I think, is that the divisions between combustibles in respect of environmental risks would widen appreciably, and vaping products, which are smokeless, while scoring well on the individual consumer risk continuum might well end up in free fall on the environmental risk continuum, something that needs to be addressed.
I’ve seen it said that there should be one set of rules for combustible products and another set of rules for noncombustible products. I think the rules need to be more nuanced than that.
George Gay is Tobacco Reporter’s European editor, but his territory spans the globe. Based in London, George has covered the tobacco industry since 1982, initially for a U.K.-based publication and since 2004 for Tobacco Reporter. George’s understanding of industry issues, combined with his keen sense of observation and dry wit, have earned him a loyal following among Tobacco Reporter’s readers.

January 1, 2022
Who D’Ya Think You Are?

Photo: EwaStudio
Your business from the regulators’ perspectives
Willie McKinney and Cheryl K. Olson
Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine—some of this may sound familiar—that you’re one of two brilliant young graduate students attending a university in the middle of Silicon Valley. You come up with a jewel of an idea for a product that could help cigarette smokers reduce their mortality and morbidity by delivering nicotine with far fewer health-destroying byproducts of combustion than traditional cigarettes.
The business environment around you is laced with artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and apps that brashly take on entire industries. The ethos of your fellow entrepreneurs is to challenge everything, smash things when they get in your way and loudly proclaim that you’re changing the world for the better. You can always correct your mistakes later.
What business are you in? To your eyes, you’re in the smoking cessation business. That is, after all, your stated goal and the purpose of the device you’ve designed. It’s a noble cause that could save millions of lives while making your investors and you a fortune. You’ve hit that ideal of doing good while doing well. What could possibly go wrong?
A lot, it turns out. Predicting those potential disasters requires that you know whether you perceive the fundamentals of your business the way that others—especially government regulators—perceive it. In our not-really-hypothetical example, the protagonists saw themselves as fighting Big Tobacco. They approached marketing their product as if it were a kind of ride share or housing share offering, industries in which regulations are both few and local. They were making consumer goods, so they mostly hired executives from packaged goods industries little acquainted with addictive ingredients or tobacco industry history.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration viewed your imagined company through a different lens. To the government (and soon the press and the general public), you were simply an extension of Big Tobacco. Your Silicon Valley brashness backfired, triggering memories of industry lies about the addictiveness of nicotine and cynical attempts at youth smoking prevention by tobacco companies. A hero’s journey became a cautionary tale.
Can this still happen today? Can the lens through which you view your company be dramatically different from the perspective taken by government regulators? Unfortunately, we see it all the time.
A Tale of Two Companies
Josh Israel started Hale Therapeutics with a co-founder who lost a family member to smoking combustible cigarettes. His device is programmed to deliver and taper off heated, aerosolized nicotine as a way of ending the addiction.
“It minimizes the discomfort of nicotine withdrawal while you learn to live a smoke-free life,” said Israel.
Hale approached the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) to open discussions toward approval of what Israel viewed as an innovative pharmaceutical delivery system for a much-studied drug. That may sound like a strange approach to take. Why not pursue a marketing authorization from the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP)? That would be faster and likely to succeed. CTP had already authorized VUSE, calling that ENDS device’s aerosol “significantly less toxic than combusted cigarettes.”
“We’re not a tobacco product. So we don’t want to be licensed as a tobacco product, and we don’t want to be looked at as a tobacco product,” Israel continued. “It’s a smoking cessation product. Why would we be classified as anything else?”
The FDA saw things differently. New CDER guidance on testing “inhaled nicotine-containing drug products” focuses on the word “heated,” and the “novel chemicals” that heat might generate. CDER may have viewed Hale’s device as akin to an e-cigarette because it heats. This difference in perceptions led CDER to point Hale toward spending a substantial chunk of time and money on animal studies that would not have been required had Hale gone down the CTP path for permission to market the same device. (And run counter to FDA pledges and initiatives to reduce use of animals in research.)
Meanwhile, Brian Quigley, the COO of Respira Technologies, was preparing to meet with CDER about his product, a nebulizer for use as a nicotine-replacement therapy. It creates and controls an unheated nicotine aerosol.
“It’s kind of shocking to think that in 2021, the number one way that smokers try to quit is cold turkey,” said Quigley.
Unlike Hale’s experience, CDER apparently viewed Respira’s product much as the company did. The fact that the nicotine was unheated worked to Respira’s advantage. CDER was more comfortable allowing the data to guide what preclinical studies Respira’s product will need. Quigley expects to submit an Investigational New Drug application to CDER in 2022.
Hale Therapeutics, however, faced a potentially costly choice. It could fight CDER. It could devote time and capital to research that it contends is unnecessary. It could switch paths, reluctantly accept the perception that it was making a tobacco product, and apply to CTP. After much deliberation, Josh Israel decided to … do something different. Hale would keep talking with the FDA about reducing the testing burden but would take action to forward its mission elsewhere.
Hale went to the U.K. and applied for a license from its Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) as a smoking cessation device.
“The goal for any public health agency should be to get people off combustible cigarettes, full stop,” said Israel. “We were embraced by the MHRA. And it’s unfortunate that the FDA is not taking the same approach.”
What is that approach? The MHRA is developing a licensing process by which e-cigarettes could be prescribed by the National Health Service in England as a medical product for smokers who wish to quit smoking. It would be the first country in the world to do so.
There are about 6.1 million smokers in England, with rates of smoking roughly inversely correlated with socioeconomic status. That means that smokers generally are at greater risk for a variety of other health and social problems, making smoking cessation especially impactful. For several years, e-cigarettes have been promoted by the governmental to combustible cigarette smokers as an effective way of both reducing immediate harm and putting those smokers on a path to quitting nicotine completely.
“The MHRA evaluation program for e-cigarettes is focused on nicotine delivery—not cessation per se—as a measure of efficacy, and with as few harmful and potentially harmful constituents as possible,” said Ian Fearon, a U.K.-based clinical research scientist who consults on nicotine and tobacco product studies. “It appears easier to obtain a medical license with MHRA than a market authorization from the Center for Tobacco Products, given the volumes of data required to support a PMTA.”
A Difference in Politics and Philosophies
One reason why there may be such a difference is that regulators reflect and illuminate the values and experiences of the countries they regulate. When CDER issued its guidance for inhaled nicotine-containing drugs in October 2020, the public perception of vaping in the U.S. had hit new lows.
San Francisco had recently banned the sale of all e-cigarettes within the city limits, ironically using a supposedly pro-health agenda to push an unknown number of former smokers who were using vaping to quit back to using combustible cigarettes. E-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury, which had been falsely associated with commercial vaping products, was still in the headlines.
Not surprisingly, the CDER guidance focuses on what could go wrong. It recommends hunting for potentially toxic “novel chemicals” through years of rodent inhalation studies before testing heated nicotine products in humans.
The U.K. has never experienced an American-style moral panic over e-cigarettes and youth. This takes a political thumb off the scale in their pragmatic weighing of the science.
It’s also not surprising that the two FDA centers that regulate nicotine products can be fractious. CDER has been part of the FDA since the 1980s. Its pathways to approval are well entrenched and clearly marked. Its mission is “making sure that safe and effective drugs are available to improve the health of the people of the United States.”
By contrast, the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products is a newbie, born from the Tobacco Control Act of 2009. It’s about balancing health risks among different segments of the public. CTP plays by different rules, proclaiming on its website that the “FDA’s traditional ‘safe and effective’ standard for evaluating medical products does not apply to tobacco.” It doesn’t approve products; it permits them to be marketed. Because of its youth, CTP procedures are still forming and solidifying.
So, let’s go back to our mind experiment for a moment. Now how do you view the business your company is in?
Willie McKinney is the founder of McKinney Regulatory Science Advisors. He’s held senior regulatory roles at major tobacco product companies and served for three years as the industry representative on the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee.

Cheryl K. Olson is a California-based public health researcher who specializes in behavioral health issues and consults on tobacco product behaviors. She spent 15 years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.

January 1, 2022
PMI Partners With African Data Scientists

Photo: Aleksandr
Philip Morris International has partnered with data scientists from Africa to study the continent’s tobacco-growing areas using satellite mapping, according to a story on the company’s website.
Six data scientists from the African Institute for Mathematical Studies recently joined PMI for a 12-week fellowship program to study tobacco-growing areas using satellite imagery. The participants developed a generic solution for quantifying the sizes of farmed land, based on the satellite images.
The partnership was the brainchild of Ishango, a social enterprise working to increase the opportunities available to talented data scientists all over the continent. “Our model is to get international companies that have interesting data science projects that our fellows can work on to build skills,” says Eunice Baguma Ball, co-founder of Ishango.
According to Jan Stuebbe, PMI’s global head of inclusion and diversity, the potential benefits of the project are considerable.
“It doesn’t only help our operations because we understand where tobacco is growing, where we can buy it and what the prices could be. It’s also a wonderful engagement tool for African organizations to say to the politicians or regulators that we try to do things that help communities and farmers in Africa,” he says. “And that increases our standing in those communities and possibly even helps us attract talent in places that we would have never looked at before.”
December 30, 2021
Sri Lanka Mulls Raising Tobacco Age to 24

Photo: vladvm50
The National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol (NATA) of Sri Lanka wants to increase the legal age to purchase alcohol and tobacco from 21 years to 24 years, reports The Nation.
“We hope to increase the legal age to 24 years because medical science has proven that 24 years is the proper age when the brain is fully and correctly developed,” said NATA Chairman Samadhi Rajapaksa at a Dec. 29 NATA panel discussion. “We will be the first country to make it 24 years.”
The authority wants to propose this amendment to the NATA Act No.27 of 2006 in 2022, as part of a wider range of reforms that are occurring to update the existing law and regulations.
Earlier this year, more than 50 percent of respondents to NATA survey said cigarettes should not be legal in Sri Lanka.
December 30, 2021
Forest Condemns Anti-Smoking Plan

Photo: sezerozger
Smokers’ rights group Forest has condemned plans by Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) to consider a complete ban on the sale of tobacco.
HSE is reportedly contemplating a sharp reduction in the number of outlets allowed to sell tobacco products and a ban on selling tobacco products near schools and universities, along with an annual tobacco tax increase of 20 percent. Other measures to be considered include reducing the nicotine content of tobacco products, banning filters and adding health warnings to individual cigarettes.
“Any form of prohibition would drive consumers underground and into the arms of criminal gangs. Ireland already has a huge problem with illicit trade,” said John Mallon, spokesman for the smokers’ group Forest Ireland, in a statement. “This would make it far worse.”
“The government has no right to intervene to this extent. Tobacco is a legal product, and many adults enjoy smoking.
“Future generations of adults should have an equal right to choose to smoke, just as many adults will choose to drink alcohol, and that choice must be respected.
“Governments have a duty to inform consumers about the health risks of smoking or drinking, but beyond that, it’s a matter for the individual.
“Any attempt to impose further restrictions on tobacco will be fiercely resisted.”
December 30, 2021
Vaping Boosts ‘Accidental’ Quitting

Photo: pioneer111
Adult smokers with no plans to quit are more likely to stop smoking if they switch to daily vaping, according to new research led by Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Published in JAMA Network Open, the Roswell Park study used data collected from 2014 to 2019 as part of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study (PATH). When the researchers focused their analysis on a select group of 1,600 smokers who initially had no plans to quit and were not using e-cigarettes when the study began, they found that those who subsequently vaped daily experienced eightfold higher odds of quitting traditional cigarettes compared to those who didn’t use e-cigarettes at all.
“These findings are paradigm-shifting, because the data suggest that vaping may actually help people who are not actively trying to quit smoking,” says Andrew Hyland, chair of health behavior at Roswell Park and scientific lead on the PATH study, in a statement. “Most other studies focus exclusively on people who are actively trying to quit smoking, but this study suggests that we may be missing effects of e-cigarettes by not considering this group of smokers with limited intention to stop smoking—a group that is often at the highest risk for poor health outcomes from cigarette smoking.”
Overall, only about 6 percent of all smokers included in the Roswell Park study quit smoking combustible cigarettes completely, but the rates of quitting were significantly higher among those who took up daily e-cigarette use—28 percent of smokers quit when they started vaping daily. The association between vaping and cigarette quitting held up even after adjusting for underlying characteristics such as educational background, income, gender, ethnicity and the number of cigarettes smoked per day at the beginning of the study.
December 29, 2021
Scientists Developing Tobacco-Based Vaccine

Photo: Baiya Phytopharm
Scientists in Thailand are using tobacco to develop a vaccine against the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus.
Testing of the Covid-19 vaccine began in 2020, with the next round of human trials due in the spring.
The benefit of tobacco is that it can be grown almost anywhere in the world at low cost, according to the researchers, who are using a low-nicotine variety from Australia. What’s more, because tobacco grows rapidly, it can be turned from a seed into a vaccine within a month.
“It takes only 10 days for us to produce a prototype and… no more than three weeks to test whether that prototype works or not,” Suthira Taychakhoonavudh, chief executive of Baiya Phytopharm, told Sky News.
Baiya Phytopharm uses the harvested leaves as a host to produce proteins that mimic the Covid-19 virus. The leaves are blended and the protein is extracted. When the resulting vaccine is injected into humans it stimulates antibodies to help fight the real virus in the future.
The company must still complete two more sets of trials and needs regulatory approval before its vaccine can be used by the public.
The earliest the vaccine would be cleared for use is late 2022.
Even though other Covid-19 vaccinations are already available, developers say it’s important to continue the project for future health security. “Covid-19 is not going to be the last one, right?” said Baiya Phytopharm’s co-founder and chief technology officer, Waranyoo Phoolcharoen. “You’re going to have so many emerging diseases and if we can develop the vaccine ourselves, then we don’t have to rely on vaccines from other countries.”
Baiya Phytopharm is not the only company using tobacco to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. British American Tobacco and Medicago—a firm back by Philip Morris International—are also working on plant-based serums.
In early December, Medicago said its vaccine candidate, enhanced by GlaxoSmithKline’s booster, was 75.3 percent effective against the Delta variant of the virus in a late-stage study.
Not everybody is excited about the tobacco industry’s involvement in vaccine development. In 2020, the World Health Organization warned governments about engaging with the tobacco industry over the development of coronavirus vaccines.
Tobacco Reporter profiled Baiya Phytopharm in its November 2020 issue.
December 28, 2021
Godfrey Phillips India Appoints New CEO

Photo: tashatuvango
Godfrey Phillips India (GPI) has appointed Sharad Aggarwal as CEO, according to The Economic Times. Aggarwal succeeds Bhisham Wadhera and will report to GPI President and Managing Director Bina Modi.
Wadhera, who has led GPI since 2015, resigned on Dec. 26 and will continue as an advisor and mentor.
Sharad has been with the organization since 1994 and has exceptional credentials of delivering results,” said Modi. “He has proven himself as an inspiring leader and led transformational changes in the organizations, and I firmly believe he is the right choice to unleash to potential of Godfrey Phillips to the fullest, create a sustainable business with sales and profit growth and value for all stakeholders.”
Prior to his most recent appointment, Aggarwal was chief operating officer of GPI. During his tenure as COO, Aggarwal invested in technology, processes and certifications for GPI’s manufacturing facilities. An alumnus of the Harvard Business School, Aggarwal holds a degree in electronics from REXC, Nagpur, and a post-graduate diploma in business management from IMTR, Ghaziabad.
GPI’s cigarette brands include Four Square, Red & White and Cavanders. The company also has an exclusive agreement to manufacture and distribute PMI’s Marlboro cigarettes in India.
December 28, 2021
Cuba Tobacco Area Down Due to Shortages

Photo: Ingo Bartussek
Cuba will reduce the tobacco planting area by about 10 percent in the 2021-2022 season due to a lack of supplies, reports Market Research Telecast.
According to Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, only 22,550 hectares out of the initially planned 25,000 hectares have been planted with tobacco this season.
Farmers in Pinar del Río, which typically accounts for 65 percent of the island’s tobacco production expect to plant only 13,921 hectares this year—the smallest area dedicated to tobacco in the province over the past decade.
Meanwhile, rains from Hurricane Ida last August and resource constraints have delayed the planting of some 3,000 hectares until January, beyond the optimal time.
Cuba’s tobacco exports reached $507 million in 2020, according to Habanos, which markets Cuba’s renowned cigars.
The sector employs some 200,000 workers on the island, rising to 250,000 at the peak of the harvest.
December 27, 2021