Blog - Tobacco Reporter

NGOs Challenge Nicotine Delisting

Three groups have sued the government of Malaysia for removing liquid nicotine from the list of controlled substances, reports Bloomberg, citing local media reports.

Malaysia is preparing legislation that seeks to ban the sale of all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, to those born after 2007. The NGOs contended that removing nicotine from the list of controlled substances before the tobacco-control rules are in place would allow vape products to be sold openly and legally to anyone, including children.

Malaysia’s health ministry removed the restrictions on nicotine liquids and gels on March 31, which allowed the government to tax vape products containing them starting April 1.

The NGOs argue that the move is unconstitutional, arguing that it went against the recommendation of the Poisons Board.

The plaintiffs in the suit are the Malaysian Council for Tobacco Control, Malaysian Green Lung Association and Voice of the Children.

July 4, 2023

Tobacco Used for Cancer Antibodies

Baiya Phytopharm claims to have produced antibodies against cancer from tobacco and undertaken successful trials using lab animals.

Instead of targeting cancer cells the way chemotherapy does, plant-based immunotherapy focuses on boosting immune cells to block the growth of cancerous cells.

While immunotherapy has gained popularity in recent years, the antibodies for such treatment remain expensive. In Thailand, immunotherapy medicine production still relies heavily on imported technologies and equipment.

According to co-founder and Chief Technical Officer Waranyoo Phoolcharoen, Baiya Phytopharm aims to reduce the cost of producing cancer-treating drugs in Thailand and make such treatments more accessible and affordable.

“Our team is developing technology to produce a plant-based protein, an alternative and cost-effective ingredient for anti-bodies to treat cancer,” Waranyoo told the Bangkok Post.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Thai pharmaceutical company made headlines with its efforts to develop a tobacco-plant based vaccine against the coronavirus. (See “Joining the Race,” Tobacco Reporter, November 2020).

Tobacco plants lend themselves well to developing pharmaceutical compounds (also see “The Virtuous Weed,” Tobacco Reporter, April 2022). In many ways, they are better suited to the task than the man-made bioreactors used in traditional vaccine development, according to experts.

July 4, 2023

Vaporesso Launches Products in Dubai

Vaporesso, the open system arm of the world’s largest atomization company, Smoore International, unveiled two groundbreaking products, the Vaporesso COSS and Vaporesso ECO, at the World Vape Show held at the Dubai World Trade Centre from June 21 to 23.

“We are thrilled to introduce Vaporesso COSS and Vaporesso ECO to more vapers at the show. These two revolutionary products are set to enhance the vaping experience, with their user-friendly features and eco-friendly design,” said Jimmy Hu, vice president of Vaporesso.

The COSS is being labeled as a “game-changer in the vaping industry,” according to a press release. The system addresses the pain points of existing products and offers an intuitive design that caters to the vaping habits of users.

“The product’s slogan, Convenient Operating, Smart Supplying, embodies its features. The Vaporesso COSS boasts the smallest size of vaping device and the longest battery life,” according to the release. “It also comes with an automatic liquid filling and charging feature. With Coil-oil Separation System, the Vaporesso COSS ensures a fresh taste without any leakage, and its consistent taste is a unique feature that sets it apart from other products.”

The ECO emphasizes the value of being eco-friendly, economical, and eco-self, according to the release. It is refillable and rechargeable. Along with its larger capacity, longer battery life, reduced heavy metal content, and leather paper packaging that can be reused and recycled, the ECO is more cost-saving, eco-friendly, and safer for both the environment and humans when compared to disposable products. The product’s daily usage costs are reduced by 60 percent, which makes it accessible to a wider audience.

“In addition to COSS and ECO, the company also has an IP counter featuring its highly popular XROS Series and LUXE X Series, along with a special display counter for its TARGET Series and GEN Series,” the release states.

July 3, 2023

Juul Accuses NJOY of Patent Infringement

Juul Labs has asked the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to block sales and imports of the NJOY Ace vapor device, claiming that the product infringes several Juul patents. It has also filed a complaint against NJOY with the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.

“Our technology, designed internally and in the U.S. and protected by our robust patent portfolio, has been the most effective product development to transition adult smokers from combustible cigarettes—switching over 2 million adult smokers in this country. Innovation is critical in this space to advance tobacco harm reduction,” said Juul Labs Chief Legal Officer Tyler Mace in a statement.

“When others infringe on our technology, we have no choice but to protect our intellectual-property rights.”

This ITC complaint follows three prior successful actions from Juul Labs at the Commission, which all resulted in barring the importation and sale of infringing products, according to Juul Labs.

“Just like we have in three prior successful ITC actions that vindicated our company’s IP rights, we intend to reach the same result here,” said Mace.

Juul Labs complain also targets Altria Group, which agreed to acquire the NJOY in March after exchanging its minority investment in Juul for a heated tobacco product intellectual property license.

The NJOY Ace device received marketing authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in April 2022.

July 3, 2023

Firms Start Posting Warning Statements

Altria Group, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and ITG Brands have started posting warning signs about cigarette smoking in more than 200,000 stores across the United States, reports CNN. The move represents one of the final steps in a lawsuit the Justice Department filed against the tobacco industry in 1999.

The signs include court-specified statements such as “Smoking kills, on average, 1,200 Americans. Every day.” They must be posted until June 30, 2025, in “highly visible places” in English and also Spanish in regions with significant numbers of Spanish speakers.

The postings come after years of dispute following U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler’s judgment in 2006, when the tobacco companies were first ordered to make the corrective statements. The landmark judgment found the industry defendants guilty of lying about the dangers of cigarettes and secondhand smoke.

The defendants lied “about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke, they suppressed research, they destroyed documents, they manipulated the use of nicotine so as to increase and perpetuate addiction, they distorted the truth about low tar and light cigarettes so as to discourage smokers from quitting, and they abused the legal system in order to achieve their goal—to make money with little, if any, regard for individual illness and suffering, soaring health costs, or the integrity of the legal system,” Kessler said in her final opinion.

R.J. Reynolds said these corrective statement signs appear on its website and had previously appeared in newspapers, television, radio and on pack inserts. “The tobacco industry has evolved considerably since this lawsuit was filed nearly 25 years ago, back in 1999,” a company spokesperson said. “Today, Reynolds American Inc. and its operating companies have a clear purpose to build ‘A Better Tomorrow’ by reducing the health impact of our business.”

July 3, 2023

ITGA Calls Attention to Growers’ Viability

During a recent tour of Africa’s leading tobacco growing country’s José Javier Aranda, the president of the International Tobacco Growers Association (ITGA), stressed the importance of sustainability and grower viability.

“Sustainability starts by securing viability to growers; without it, the very pillar of the sector is at risk,” he said.

A fifth-generation tobacco grower in Salta, Argentina, Aranda shared examples to improve social and environmental conditions in tobacco growing that had been successfully implemented in his home country. He cited the contributions of Argentina’s Special Tobacco Fund, which has allowed local growers to remain viable and reinvest in social, economic and environmental initiatives.

As part of his tour, Aranda attended TAMA Farmers’ Trust annual general meeting in Lilongwe, Malawi, which was opened by Malawi’s minister of agriculture, Dalitso Kawale. During the gathering, Aranda stressed the need for governments and grower bodies to work against the demonization of the sector.

Another key point of discussion was the conference of the parties to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which will take place in Panama in November (COP10). The ITGA has been campaigning to counter the claims raised by WHO about tobacco farming and about the economic viability of alternatives crops.

“WHO FCTC operates against its own rules of procedure and under Article 5.3 is deliberately excluding the tobacco farmers’ voice and other tobacco sector key players from the discussion,” said Aranda. “This is the main reason why Article 17 (economically viable alternatives to tobacco growing) has not seen any evolution.

“Article 17 has not provided any results in the search of viable alternative crops in the great majority of tobacco growing countries. Growers are already planting complementary crops whenever the conditions are provided. We urge the WHO FCTC to apply a pragmatic approach towards this issue. ITGA and its member associations are ready to cooperate.”

In Harare, Zimbabwe, the ITGA attended the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association’s annual general meeting and conducted its 2023 Africa regional meeting, officially opened by Minister of Agriculture Anxious J. Masuka. Representatives of four leading tobacco-growing countries attended these meetings: Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, while the public session was joined by key partners and stakeholders in the sector.

During the ITGA Africa regional meeting closed session, growers’ representatives presented reports highlighting the key dynamics in their respective markets. Tobacco growers in Malawi have strengthened their efforts in producing a compliant crop, for example, while in Zimbabwe, the current sustainability focus is on curing fuels, agricultural labor practices and traceability.

Earlier in June, ITGA CEO Mercedes Vázquez participated in several events in Tanzania, hosted by Tobacco Cooperative Joint Enterprise. Among other parties, she met Tanzania’s minister of agriculture, Hussein M. Bashe and the Tanzania Tobacco Board.

July 3, 2023

From Plantations to Nicotine ’Plants’

Synthetic nicotine could help promote global food security.

By Sudhanshu Patwardhan

The tobacco industry is undergoing rapid transformation. Companies are increasingly offering safer nicotine alternatives to current consumers of risky forms of tobacco. Is it time for them to reassess their supply chains to procure nicotine from nonagricultural sources and in the process free up land for growing crops that can feed the world’s 8 billion people? A study of the economics of tobacco cultivation and nicotine consumption may give us practical answers.

Millions of hectares of rich, fertile land are used for growing tobacco to meet the nicotine needs of over 1.1 billion tobacco users globally. Except for Swedish-style snus and tobacco used in novel heated-tobacco products, most of the tobacco grown eventually harms public health due to the toxicants arising out of its curing and manufacturing (e.g., tobacco-specific nitrosamines, added chemicals in smokeless tobacco products) and use (e.g., harmful smoke components). On May 31, the World Health Organization marks World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) with an interesting theme: “We need food, not tobacco.”

Last year, for the first time ever, two U.N. bodies—the WHO and the U.N. Environment Programme)—published a list of the environmental harms from tobacco-related farming, manufacturing, supply chain and consumption. Tobacco-related harms to the environment start from the seed and go well beyond the cigarette and bidi smoke. The WHO notes that globally, an additional 200,000 hectares of land is cleared annually for growing tobacco and curing tobacco leaves that are used in making smoked and smokeless tobacco products. Rich and diverse natural habitats, including pristine rainforests, are being lost to meet the global tobacco demand. It is estimated that 3.7 liters of water are used to make one cigarette. Worldwide, trillions of cigarettes are sold and burned annually. The environmental pollution is not limited to the emitted smoke and the ash but also the cigarette butt litter that refuses to decompose for years. In South Asian countries, spitting smokeless tobacco imposes an additional burden on health and leaves unsightly marks in buildings and roads. Even the pharmaceutical grade nicotine used in medically licensed nicotine-replacement products and e-liquids for vaping products is obtained predominantly from tobacco plants.

Any slogan that simply calls for more food instead of tobacco oversimplifies the economics of tobacco.

This year’s WNTD theme intends to put a spotlight on the arable land locked in tobacco plantations that could instead provide food security to the world’s 8 billion people. Indeed, hunger and lack of nutritious food kill millions of people worldwide every year. Feeding the ever-growing world population without denuding forest land remains a big challenge for reasons ranging from environment and climate change to biodiversity. Therefore, in a world with finite arable land, repurposing tobacco farms for growing food are an obvious target for policymakers, environmentalists and economists.

Sadly, the WNTD theme creates a false dichotomy, unnecessarily pitting tobacco farmers against a hungry world. Alas, one cannot simply switch tobacco farms and farmers to grow alternative food crops with a snap of a finger. Global demand for tobacco continues relatively unabated, thus keeping suppliers invested in a profitable crop. It is also important to remember that tobacco is an unusually hardy plant. Not all food crops can withstand conditions that the tobacco plant can endure. Unlike edible vegetables and fruits, the produce from tobacco plantations is a leaf that is included as a raw material for further processing into a product, thus not subjecting the farmers to the whims and shameful wastage due to strict size and shape requirements of western supermarket buyers. The tobacco leaf markets are utility focused and well supported through longstanding relationships among stakeholders across a sophisticated global supply chain and have lifted millions out of poverty. Any slogan that simply calls for more food instead of tobacco oversimplifies the economics of tobacco.

The health harms from risky forms of smoked and smokeless tobacco products such as cigarettes, cigars, bidis, hookah, gutkha, khaini, mishri, zarda, etc. are already well known. That knowledge has not made these products or their use obsolete—even today, over a billion people around the world consume these risky products, and more than half of them die prematurely as a result. Nicotine is addictive but is not the cause of tobacco-related cancers, cardiovascular disease and lung disease.

Many doctors harbor misperceptions about nicotine, wrongly believing that nicotine in the tobacco products causes cancer.

The invention of nicotine-replacement therapy (NRT) products over three decades ago, in the form of nicotine gums, skin patches, lozenges and mouth sprays, was crucial in realizing nicotine’s role as a medicine in helping quit tobacco and finding these products a place on the WHO’s model essential medicines list. NRT enables smokers and smokeless tobacco users to better manage their cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Still, quitting tobacco and preventing relapse remains a big challenge globally for a variety of interlinked reasons: (i) Pharmaceutical investment and innovation in improved tobacco cessation tools and products has been lacking in recent years, (ii) universal access to affordable and appealing nicotine-replacement products remains poor, and (iii) healthcare professionals around the world are not adequately trained on how to advise their patients to use nicotine-replacement products.

In fact, many of the doctors themselves harbor misperceptions about nicotine, wrongly believing that nicotine in the tobacco products causes cancer. This limits doctors’ ability to confidently support their patients’ tobacco de-addiction journey using nicotine-replacement principles. The obvious question then is: How do we ensure that current users of tobacco get all the help they can from their healthcare advisers and governments to make quitting tools accessible, affordable, appealing and available? If done at a global level, quitting success will further inspire confidence among consumers, healthcare practitioners and policymakers to accelerate the decline of the demand for tobacco.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is often elegantly simplified as a treaty for demand reduction, supply reduction and harm reduction strategies. The largest demand arises from the billion-plus cohort of current users of risky tobacco products—and that’s where affordable cessation support and safer nicotine alternatives offer the highest likelihood of practical harm reduction. So, for the agricultural transformation much needed to free up arable land, a global reduction in demand for tobacco will be a key economic driver over time for farmers to actively seek other viable alternatives. It would then be crucial to provide government support and subsidy over a phased reduction in tobacco farming.

The FCTC dedicates two entire articles in the original treaty text to alternative livelihoods for those in the supply chain and addressing environmental impact—Articles 17 and 18. Particularly in implementing those two articles, little progress has been made in the past 20 years since the treaty came into force. That is because even lesser success has been achieved on a ground-level implementation of the FCTC’s Article 14 that calls for tobacco dependence treatment provision at a national level.

In recent years, many advances in chemistry and chemical engineering have resulted in new processes and patents issued for synthesizing nicotine from nontobacco raw materials. If the correct isomer of nicotine—the S-isomer—can be manufactured at scale using these processes, that can be revolutionary and indeed game changing. Using such synthetically manufactured nicotine, nicotine-replacement products that are innovative, suitably regulated and where necessary medically licensed can thus be introduced globally for tobacco cessation at low cost and in product formats appealing to current adult smokers and smokeless tobacco users. Agricultural transformation and enhanced food security will naturally follow this purely on economics principles.

Sudhanshu Patwardhan is a British-Indian, U.K.-licensed medical doctor who is passionate about helping people quit risky forms of tobacco. For the past two decades, he has lived and worked in three continents, doing senior roles in research, strategy and policy in the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries.

In his early years in tobacco harm reduction, his team of clinical researchers and lab scientists set the foundations for the assessment of reduced-risk products, now accepted by regulators and the industry as the definitive approach for duty of care and regulatory compliance. At Nicoventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of British American Tobacco, he was instrumental in enabling the first e-cigarette company acquisition by a global tobacco business. In his policy role there, Patwardhan shaped the creation of a global key opinion leader network in consumer advocacy and public health champions. .

With the British Standards Institution, Patwardhan led the creation of the world’s first vaping products’ standards for safety and quality in 2015 and the BSI Online Age Checking specifications in collaboration with the Westminster-based Digital Policy Alliance in 2018. .

In 2018, he co-founded the Centre for Health Research and Education that now has a team of over 40 medical and public health experts globally working in cancer prevention. Patwardhan splits time between the U.K. and South Asia on tobacco harm reduction projects that address the needs of the most disadvantaged tobacco users.

July 1, 2023

Dissecting Their Drives

To help nicotine users move down the risk continuum, it is crucial to understand consumer motivations.

By Jessica Zdinak

What drives change? And by change I don’t mean a short-term, temporary change but a long-term behavior change that alters entire lives. Most habits take around 14 days to “stick,” but behavior change that comes with an addiction works differently. This is what we face as scientists, public health experts, government officials, manufacturers and representatives in the nicotine and tobacco industry. Many of us want to save lives; some of us want to develop products for consumers to enjoy all while making a living and supporting our families. No matter what perspective we come from, I think we can all agree that taking a combustible cigarette smoker from cigarettes to an alternative, potentially reduced harm product often seems like a herculean task.

To some, it seems like an almost impossible task given the intricacies of product development, including the iterative process of prototypes, testing, retesting and validation of new products. This, combined with the extensive resources and time needed in the U.S. to get a new nicotine/tobacco product authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, leaves many people awake at night wondering if success is possible. I will argue that it takes many small steps by many people to drive success in today’s industry. And it starts with our consumer—the smoker.

It’s essential that we recognize every day how our lives as researchers, directors, analysts, public health experts and executives look nothing like the consumer we’re studying. Whether in the innovative and product development space, market research, regulatory research or FDA application submissions, if you don’t remember this, then you may find yourself wondering why you and your company aren’t as successful as you’d like.

At the Applied Research and Analysis Company (ARAC), before our team begins daily work activities, we go outside of our own lives, thoughts, feelings and behaviors and remind ourselves of the following:

We are not our consumers. We have biases and perspectives from a life likely not lived by our consumers. Get out of our heads and get into theirs.

It may benefit you and your company to learn one area of psychological science that helps you to understand what drives your consumers’ behavior and most importantly—how to change it. With science exponentially advancing over the years, it’s easy to forget and leave behind the most basic scientific principles of human behavior that got us to such an advancement. As a cognitive behavioral scientist, I see too many phenomenal researchers who look to the most recently published literature but fail to remember the science that this literature was built upon.

Some of the most basic scientific principles of behavior change revolve around a stimulus-response relationship, also known as operant conditioning (Skinner, 1938). If you are a parent, you are likely to have heard some of this terminology before when referring to allowances for chore work, spanking for bad behavior, screen time for positive behavior, etc. Unfortunately, a lot of this terminology gets misused and is therefore misunderstood. Fortunately, however, the basic principles of this behavior change model are both still relevant and one of the most robust and successful ways to change behavior. We can think of this as a box with quadrants with two main variables:

The first variable is the actual behavior. Before applying this model, we have to ask ourselves, do we want the specific behavior in reference to increase or decrease in its occurrence. If we want to increase a desired behavior, we call this “reinforcement,” and if we want to decrease the undesired behavior, we call this “punishment.”

The second variable is the stimulus being applied to the individual, animal, etc. If we are applying a stimulus (giving something to the individual, animal, etc.), we call this “positive,” and if we are removing a stimulus (taking something away from the individual, animal, etc.), we call this “negative.”

When we combine these two variables, we get four outcomes that look like this:

Positive reinforcement = applying a stimulus to increase a desired behavior
Negative reinforcement = removing a stimulus to increase a desired behavior
Positive punishment = applying a stimulus to decrease an undesired behavior
Negative punishment = removing a stimulus to decrease an undesired behavior

Putting yourself into a smoker’s life, which of these four scenarios do you think would be most beneficial to changing their behavior? Does it seem appropriate to focus our efforts on the undesired behavior (smoking), or would it seem more helpful to focus efforts on a desired, more “positive” behavior, such as walking or exercising or the use of a potentially less harmful product? Some research has examined this (Borkowski and Leal, 2018), showing how policies and initiatives aimed at punishment (changing the undesired behavior through applying or removing a stimulus) may be ineffective and potentially misguided.

The catch here is that for this behavior change model to work, researchers and companies need to identify what the individual views as satisfying and pleasurable versus unsatisfying and uninteresting. It is likely that companies already apply some aspects of this in their regulatory, product and business strategies, but without a team of experts focused on this process, it is likely that they will come up short of their goals. It’s impossible to know what is satisfying versus unsatisfying to every single smoker in the world, but there are research methods, designs and analyses that are proven to identify and describe subpopulations, or “pockets,” of people (in experimental psychology, we call them “interaction effects”) that would all be in majority agreement of what is satisfying to them versus unsatisfying. Developing individual products to target each of these “pockets” of smokers would lead a company to be the first to have a consumer–focused portfolio of nicotine/tobacco products that encompasses the entire harm reduction continuum.

Of course, we know that there are other obstacles to be faced in this industry. We know that most of the public has incorrect perceptions of risk associated with products along the risk continuum. We know the challenges of having reliable access to all consumers, particularly those most vulnerable. Without federal government research experience, many people have questions on how to work with the regulator versus against them. Finding the right partnership within and outside your organization to help with these complexities is key to succeeding in this complex industry. Your consumer is a person with inward thoughts and feelings that drive their outward behavior—if you focus on understanding these aspects, you can’t go wrong. And who knows, you may develop that portfolio of products that puts an end to smoking!

Jessica Zdinak is the owner and chief research officer of Applied Research
and Analysis Co.

July 1, 2023

Peddling Trivia

A Japanese government survey ‘reveals’ that nonsmokers find smoke unpleasant while smokers like it.

By George Gay

According to a recent government of Japan survey, about 83 percent of Japanese people aged 18 and older find tobacco smoke unpleasant. The Cabinet Office survey, reported by Kyodo News, questioned 3,000 people online and via email during August and September last year and resulted in 1,556 valid responses. Slightly more than 56 percent of respondents said they found tobacco smoke unpleasant while about 26 percent reported they found it “somewhat unpleasant.”

Such a survey probably cost the government relatively little, but, still, these are hard times, and I could have come up with the figure of 83 percent for free without bothering 3,000 people and while causing much less environmental degradation than the survey’s computer-based energy use would have caused and will continue to cause through the electronic storage of its results in multiple versions and places. You see, just a couple of clicks on the internet will turn up the fact that the smoking prevalence in Japan is about 17 percent.

I’m certain that I don’t have to explain my thinking here, but, just in case, let me underline it by saying the survey found that about 75 percent of men found tobacco smoke unpleasant while about 89 percent of women did so. And do you know what? The smoking incidence among men is about 27 percent while that among women is about 8 percent.

Let the heralds sound the trumpets! Nonsmokers find tobacco smoke unpleasant while smokers like it or are indifferent to it!

Or perhaps I should say that nonsmokers and nonvapers find smoke and heat-not-burn (HnB) vapor unpleasant. Japan is held up as an example of good practice when it comes to helping smokers switch to less risky forms of tobacco/nicotine consumption because, while its laws do not allow the use of electronic cigarettes that deliver nicotine, HnB devices are permitted and have gained much ground on the Japanese market. It is true that the survey report mentions only tobacco smoke, but I suspect that this is because many people are heavily into deeming things when they feel it convenient to do so. Smoke is vapor, and vapor is smoke, while a “smoke-free” country might have a smoking incidence of 5 percent and, in theory, a vaping incidence of 100 percent, even though vapor is considered to be smoke. You know the sort of thinking.

When times are hard, or even when they are not, it is surely difficult to justify a government’s expending resources on such a survey. Is it possible that anybody believes that anything meaningful can be discerned from asking 0.002 percent of Japan’s population whether tobacco smoke, as they perceive it, is unpleasant or somewhat unpleasant? Is there a difference even? Surely, if something is unpleasant, it is also somewhat unpleasant, and if it is somewhat unpleasant, it is also unpleasant. Remember, we are asking people with presumably varying perceptions to distinguish a degree of unpleasantness within a single entity; we are not asking them to compare different entities.

In the report I saw, it was not even clear to what unpleasant referred. Is it the look of the smoke? After all, tobacco smoke is one of the few air pollutants that is visible, and, if I am correct in assuming that vapor is deemed to be smoke, the sight of vapor would offend some. There are quite a lot of people, I have noticed, who become overwrought when vapers flaunt their exhalations. More likely, however, it is the smell of the smoke, but this would seem to reduce the value of the survey further. Haven’t we known for years the answer to the general question about whether Japanese people find tobacco smoke unpleasant? Isn’t it the case that the Japanese tobacco market is one of just a few where successful efforts have been made to sell cigarettes partly on the basis that they give off reduced tobacco smells? At one time, they were referred to in Japan, and might still be, as LSS (low smoke smell) cigarettes.

But these surveys are taken seriously—to what I would regard as almost ludicrous levels. The Kyodo report explained how the previous survey into attitudes to tobacco smoke, conducted in 2019, discovered that 78 percent found it unpleasant while warning that the results from 2019 and 2022 could not be compared because of changes made to the survey methodologies. Does any of this matter? Is there a need to know this stuff that outweighs the environmental harms being caused? When desktop printers first arrived on the scene, it became common for documents that appeared on computer screens to contain notes asking the recipients to think before they printed them. This was sensible, but now, has the time come to impress on people whether there is a need to carry out the research they are contemplating and whether it is necessary to see the results of that research disseminated and stored?

One of the major current debates is that around artificial intelligence (AI), often with conclusions being drawn without first defining what sort of AI is under discussion. As I understand things currently, I would welcome the takeover of humanity by AI if that AI were powered in all aspects by renewable energy, capable of self-replication and movement, had sensory systems at least as varied and efficient as those of humans and started its intellectual forays with no information inherited from its creators; or, if it were not possible to kick it off with no information, if it were supplied only with the three-volume Principia Mathematica on the foundations of mathematics by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell.

Time to Move On

On the other hand, it would be a matter of deep concern to me if the AI that took over for humanity was not powered by renewable energy, not self-replicating, not capable of movement, had no or limited sensory systems and had its intellectual arteries clogged with the sorts of trivia—and here I would include the results of the survey under discussion—that is, in large part, the sum of the intellectual history of the human race. We, or our replacement AI, cannot move forward while dragging this history behind us. It would be like trying to replace an old and discredited product, such as a cigarette, with a proven, technologically advanced product, such as a vaping device, while shaking our heads and calling for more historical research into all the problems and tragedies that the old product caused previously. Let us move on. As far as is possible, let us start afresh.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not picking on the government of Japan; it’s just that I was asked to write about the country and, in doing some reading, was intrigued by the story of the survey or, at least, an aspect of it. I was about to pass over the story, in fact, when my mind latched onto the unpleasant/somewhat unpleasant issue. Such efforts as were put into the survey in question are wasted everywhere, and such waste is not limited to governments. The amount of money wasted on pointless research must be astronomical. We have known for decades that smoking is bad for you and that the main offense given to nonsmokers by smokers is not the health risks associated with secondhand smoke but its smell, mainly the lingering smell given off by ashtrays and garments worn by smokers.

That’s not to say that the survey conducted in Japan did not serve a useful purpose. It provided the government with the assurance that it could mobilize the tyranny of the majority. “Although the government in April 2020 imposed a general ban on smoking in indoor spaces used by multiple people, nearly half of respondents answered they want stricter measures to stop secondhand smoking,” Kyodo reported. And of those wanting further restrictions, about 60 percent wanted them introduced in outdoor locations, such as streets and parks.

Now I don’t want to cause these people any unnecessary anxiety, but, according to earth.org, the biggest sources of air pollution in Tokyo, for instance, have nothing to do with tobacco smoke. They are down to vehicle emissions and factory fumes. The worst and most widespread form of this pollution is fine particulate matter, PM2.5, that gets deep into lungs and has deleterious health effects similar to those caused by cigarette smoking, including increased respiratory and heart disease occurrences.

Apparently, the effect of air pollution on people in Tokyo, depending on where in the city they operate, is equivalent to their smoking from 2.68 to 4.25 cigarettes a week. Now I would challenge any resident of Tokyo to smoke the equivalent of 2.68–4.25 cigarettes solely through the inhalation of secondhand smoke while out in the street or in a park. They would be pushing it to smoke the equivalent of a measurable fraction of a cigarette. So, if the government is worried about the health of Tokyo’s people, it should, rather than conduct surveys on people’s attitude to tobacco smoke, take action on … well, there is only so much free advice I am willing to give.

Navel Gazing

Of course, if you really want to waste your effort on surveys, there is no better way than navel-gazing. And the Japanese Cancer Association (JCA), while undoubtedly doing much good work, is also keen on conducting surveys of its own members. In February last year, as part of a piece entitled “Trends in smoking prevalence and attitudes toward tobacco control among members of the JCA 2004–2017,” it said that recently, use of new tobacco products, including HnB tobacco, had become prevalent among young people. “Tobacco industries advertise the lower risk of the product compared with cigarettes; however, long‐term risks and other potentially fatal risks are unknown,” it said. “To fight against a new enemy of tobacco control, our academic society should boost activities to study the risk of new tobacco products.”

Note that while many people, including those at the hard-to-convince U.S. Food and Drug Administration, believe that at least certain HnB devices can provide smokers with alternatives to traditional cigarettes that are less risky to consume than cigarettes, and while the JCA admits that the long-term effects of consuming HnB products are unknown, it has declared them an enemy of tobacco control.

In other words, we seem to be up against that form of “science” where the result is deemed, and the evidence sought to establish that result. This would be chilling even if it were confined to Japan, but the JCA has wider ambitions. “As a leader in the cancer research community, the JCA should take action to deal with the control of new tobacco products globally,” it said.

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.

July 1, 2023

Waste Not, Want Not

Atlas Agri wants to help Zimbabwe achieve its volumes by reducing post-harvest losses.

By Taco Tuinstra

Anybody who has worked in the trade knows that leaf tobacco can be a hairy business. Changing weather patterns, mounting regulations and cutthroat competition keep merchants on their toes. But few dealers will have experienced the industry’s hirsute dynamics as intimately as the people that built Atlas Agri. Not only did its management team get the company up and running in record time; they also vowed to refrain from shaving until they had bought 20 million kg.

The idea for Atlas Agri arose when a group of like-minded tobacco veterans sat down and agreed that the time was right to establish a new company. Tobacco was in short supply globally, partly due to miscalculations of how Covid-19 would impact cigarette consumption (it went up instead of down). In Zimbabwe, the cabinet had just approved the Tobacco Value Chain Transformation Plan, which, among other things, calls for a significant crop boost. “There was lots of opportunity,” says Atlas Agri Managing Director Alex Mackay, who previously served as CEO of leaf operations at Premium Tobacco International. “It just made sense.”

Atlas Agri incorporated in June last year—just in time to participate in Zimbabwe’s 2022–2023 crop cycle—and went to work immediately. The company set up an office and tobacco receiving/storage area in Harare in the cavernous halls of the Boka Tobacco Floors off of Simon Mazarodze Road. With an eye on future expansion into additional markets, Dubai made sense as the seat of Atlas Agri’s global headquarters.

The startup process was made easier by the facts that the company’s leaders knew each other from previous engagements and had extensive experience in the tobacco business. In addition to Mackay, the management team includes Geoff Martin, who oversees finance and administration; Peter Kockott, who leads the agronomy department; and Eric Le Patourel, who is in charge of operations. International sales are coordinated from Dubai by Global Chief Finance Officer Michael Rust and Global Sales Executive Albert Edwards, whose career includes senior positions at Premium Tobacco, Imperial Brands and Limbe Leaf Tobacco Co.

A hairy business: Several members of the Atlas Agri team vowed to refrain from shaving until the company had bought 20 million kg.

Supporting Farmers

Atlas Agri’s experience also helped it quickly recruit farmers. Many growers remembered the company’s representatives from their roles at other leaf buyers, creating instant trust. Another factor driving growers’ enthusiasm, according to Kockott, was the fact that Atlas Agri offered them a well-thought-out package. Because most small farmers in Zimbabwe lack the means to finance their operations, contractors provide them with inputs ahead of the season and recover the cost after the tobacco has been grown. The system works if implemented carefully but also carries risks. In some cases, growers have been unable to repay their loans. Atlas Agri aims to prevent defaults by lending growers a practical input package without unnecessary fills and high-cost items. “It all comes down to debt bondage,” says Mackay. “Once you have a farmer who is less beholden to the contractor, he has a better chance of repaying his loan and to profit.”

The strategy paid off. Despite its relatively late start last year, Atlas Agri signed contracts more than 15,000 farmers. Once the season got underway, the company kept supporting its growers. “We did not just give them a contract and then waited six months to collect the product,” says Mackay. Traveling in four-wheel drive vehicles and on motorbikes, Atlas Agri’s agronomy team frequently ventured into the countryside to assist its contracted farmers with agronomic advice. Such trips were made not only by junior leaf technicians but also by upper management, allowing growers to interact directly with company officials whose rank may have kept them in the office if they had worked for other tobacco buyers. “That personal touch—that has been a strong point of our approach,” says Mackay, borrowing a slogan popularized by Souza Cruz in Brazil.

Reducing Field Losses

In addition to supporting its growers and serving its customers, Atlas Agri is eager to help Zimbabwe achieve the goals of its Tobacco Value Chain Transformation Plan. As Minister of Agriculture Anxious Masuka explained in Tobacco Reporter earlier this year (see “The Man Behind the Plan,” Tobacco Reporter, May 2023), the country aims to preside over a tobacco industry worth $5 billion by 2025. Part of that growth is to be achieved by moving beyond green leaf and processed tobacco into value-added products such as cut rag and cigarettes.

Opportunities for such expansion, however, depend heavily on the willingness of international tobacco firms to invest in Zimbabwe—a factor outside of the nation’s control. This means that much of the desired income will likely have to be realized by bringing more leaf to market. The transformation plan aims for a 300 million kg crop by 2025—70 million kg more than its farmers were expected to deliver this year.

One of the ways in which Atlas Agri hopes to boost production is by reducing growers’ post-harvest losses. Following a massive land reform program at the turn of the century, Zimbabwe’s tobacco sector is dominated by small-scale farmers. Whereas in 1998, the crop was produced by 1,500 commercial growers and fewer than 1,000 smallholders, the industry now comprises about 144,000 small farmers and between 300 and 400 commercial operations.

Unlike their commercial counterparts, who are heavily mechanized with tractors, irrigation systems and forced-air curing tunnels, the smallholders run barebones operations. Due to inadequate infrastructure and other limitations, Zimbabwe’s small-scale growers may lose up to 50 percent of their crops, according to the Tobacco Research Board (see “The Scientific Approach,” Tobacco Reporter, June 2023).

One of the major constraints is curing barn capacity. Many smallholders grow more tobacco than their barns can accommodate. Tobacco that ripens after the curing barn has filled up is often left to rot in the field. While this could be remedied by building more curing barns, Atlas Agri considers this a less-than-ideal solution for small growers. Erecting such structures, the company argues, will not only push farmers deeper into debt but also boost demand for wood as the fuel to cure tobacco and additional bricks, contributing to deforestation.

So instead of constructing additional curing barns, Atlas Agri is encouraging its contracted farmers to build inexpensive, natural air-curing systems, known in southern Africa as a “Chigaffas.” Already used to cure burley in many countries, a Chigaffa is a simple, inexpensive wooden structure with racks to dry tobacco and a roof made out of plastic tarp or thatch. “We say to our farmers, if your curing barn is empty, reap straight into the curing barn,” says Kockott. “But if your curing barn is full, instead of waiting for the barn to be empty, by which time your tobacco in the field becomes overripe, reap on the day you are supposed to and put it in the Chigaffa.”

The purpose of the Chigaffa is to alleviate pressure on the barn and prevent tobacco from sitting too long in the fields. “If you put overripe tobacco in the barn—by the time it is wilted and ready to fix color, it will have turned brown, so you have lost quality and yields,” says Kockott. Using a Chigaffa allows farmers to market tobacco that would otherwise be lost. Even if the Chigaffa leaf does not attract premium prices, the potential for additional volumes presents opportunity for additional income.

While some have expressed concern that the Chigaffa system will bring lower quality tobaccos to market, Mackay notes that those styles are in line with prevailing customer preferences. “Global demand for value and super-value styles currently exceeds that for top quality tobacco,” he points out. Another advantage: Using the Chigaffa reduces the time spent in the traditional curing barn by a few days, lowering wood consumption, thus contributing to sustainability—a fact that should appeal to international customers, who expect their tobacco to be grown according to strict environmental, social and governance requirements.

Convinced by the merits of natural air curing, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board endorsed the system earlier this year. “The introduction of this natural Virginia tobacco product is in line with the Tobacco Value Chain Transformation Plan,” the regulator wrote in a press note. “By producing more natural Virginia tobacco […] we believe the local tobacco industry will generate a wider range of qualities for customers on the global market, creating demand and encouraging investment for the ultimate longevity of the Zimbabwean tobacco industry.”

Just by reducing post-harvest losses, a small farmer could increase his or her volume by up to a quarter, according to Atlas Agri. If the entire smallholder sector optimized its operations, it would go a long way toward achieving the 300 million kg proposed in the transformation plan. “Think about it,” says Mackay. “Smallholders produced approximately 200 million kg out of this year’s 260 million-plus kg crop. If they can add a quarter to what they already deliver, the country will be quite close to the desired 300 million kg—without claiming a single additional hectare of farmland or increasing pressure on our woodlands.”

Beyond Tobacco

In addition to boosting tobacco volumes, Atlas Agri is exploring complimentary crops, such as soya and cotton, to enhance farmer viability. Already, the company has provided its contracted growers with inputs for 700 hectares of soya. According to Mackay, diversification will not only improve farmers’ financial security but also rehabilitate their soils through better crop rotation. This in turn should ease the pressure from pests and disease, reducing the need for chemical crop protection agents, thereby creating a more sustainable product.

Atlas Agri has made tremendous progress since its incorporation last year. “We are starting to reap the fruits of our heavy lifting,” says Mackay. “It’s incredibly gratifying when you see farmers smiling because you know you have exceeded expectations.” When the business hit its 20 million kg milestone in May 2023, the company’s by now shaggy crew broke out the champagne, along with the razors, and took advantage of a rare opportunity to unwind—but only momentarily because it’s time already to start thinking about the next crop.

Like this season, the upcoming production cycle will throw up plenty of regulatory, environmental and competitive hurdles. If Atlas Agri’s first year of operation is any indication, however, the team members will overcome them with their trademark combination of passion, professionalism and persistence, ready to take each of the challenges on their freshly shaven chins.

What a difference 20 million kg makes: Upon achieving their buying target, Atlas Agri’s team paid a well-deserved visit to the barber.

Taco Tuinstra is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial director. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, he coordinates the work of staff writers and contributors. On his watch, Tobacco Reporter has won several awards for editorial excellence. Since joining the magazine in 1997, Taco has visited more than 75 countries to meet industry representatives in their markets and to report tobacco news firsthand.

July 1, 2023