Category: Print Edition

Stranglehold

Photos courtesy of Vladislav Vorotnikov
The illicit cigarette trade remains a big problem in Central Asia.
By Vladislav Vorotnikov
Last year, cigarette production perked up in Central Asia, a part of post-Soviet space comprising Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. The positive production dynamics were registered despite mounting regulatory pressure and flourishing illegal trade.
Kazakhstan, the largest cigarette market in the region, saw a 7.9 percent rise in the tobacco industry’s output to 17.4 billion items in 2022, the National Statistical Bureau estimated. This is the strongest increase in the past decade, following a three-year decline.
Last year, the average household spent KZT44,800 ($101) on tobacco, up 10.8 percent compared with the previous year. This is primarily associated with a steady rise in tariffs, as Kazakhstan has been gradually raising the excise rate and the minimum prices per pack since 2021—a process slated to end in 2024. Against this background, the average price of cigarettes in Kazakhstan jumped by 17.9 percent in May 2023 compared with the previous year.
Some lawmakers were troubled by the trend. “Of course, tobacco is not bread, and it doesn’t belong to the list of essential products. However, there is a certain percentage of our citizens for whom it is also necessary,” said Sergey Ershov, a member of Kazakhstan’s parliament. “And in a situation where the prices for a pack of cigarettes are growing, and the incomes of the population remain at the same level, a further increase in the cost can lead to a significant increase share of illegal trade, inevitably spurring the consumption of cheap counterfeit products of dubious quality.”
The government is boasting of a 10.1 percent drop in domestic tobacco consumption to 3.7 billion units in the first quarter of 2023 compared with the 4.1 billion units during the same period of the previous year, though there are doubts whether these figures actually reflect the state of play in a market where the share of illegal trade reportedly is surging.
Currently, Kazakhstan’s cigarette market is dominated by Philip Morris Kazakhstan, which runs a factory in the Almaty region it acquired in 1993, and Japan Tobacco International Kazakhstan, which operates a factory in the same region. The sole local manufacturer, Phoenix Enterprises, which sells cigarettes under the Dryuzba brand, accounts for a small share of the budget segment of the market. In addition, nearly a quarter of demand on the Kazakhstan tobacco market is met by importers, including BAT Kazakhstan, KT&G and Donskoy Tobacco.
Uzbekistan has an estimated consumption of around 10 billion cigarettes per year, worth $500 million, according to Igor Nikolsky, JTI regional director.
In the past few years, Uzbekistan reportedly saw a substantial rise in cigarette production. Currently, the industry comprises the Tashkent Tobacco factory, manufacturing JTI brands, and the UzBat factory, operated by BAT Uzbekistan. The local press reported that these two factories ramped up production to a level allowing the country to nearly reach self-sufficiency.
In 2018, the Uzbek government abandoned a decade-long ban on cigarette exports from the country, allowing local factories to sell to Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and other countries.

Dignitaries examine tobacco at the Tashkent Tobacco factory in Uzbekistan.
The Wild West
The level of government control over the tobacco market varies across Central Asia. In Kazakhstan, it is relatively strict while in some other countries, such as Kyrgyzstan, it leaves a lot to be desired.
In 2021, the Kazakh government estimated that the share of illegal trade on the domestic market was close to 1.6 percent. Market players have doubts about whether this figure is correct, however. JTI Kazakhstan, for instance, put this rate at 3 percent to 5 percent, which is in line with the estimation of the Association of Trade Enterprises. Moreover, the steady rise in excise tariffs will likely drive this figure up by 1 percent to 2 percent per year, according to Alyona Stepanishina, external communication manager of JTI Kazakhstan.
Over the past two years, the share of illegal tobacco products in Uzbekistan jumped from 4 percent to 15 percent, Komil Abdurakhmonov, a spokesperson for the Agency for Regulation of Alcohol and Tobacco Market, estimated.
The lion’s share of illegal tobacco in the market comes from smuggling and flows into the country through the southern regions, Abdurakhmonov claimed. Commonly smuggled brands include Milano from the United Arab Emirates and KT&G’s Esse, he said. The cigarettes are first delivered to Kirgizstan and Tajikistan to be further smuggled to Uzbekistan.
“A series of recent studies showed that in all stores and the markets, we have Milano cigarettes, coming from Dubai. Their price is much lower than that of the local brands, and many consumers smoke them because of the price,” Abdurakhmonov said, adding that there are also substantial concerns over the quality of these products. “Simply checking information on the label, we can see that the level of nicotine content in these cigarettes by several times exceeds the allowed levels,” he added.
Ulugbek Kasimov, a spokesperson for the Uzbekistan State Customs Committee, also blamed Kyrgyzstan for illegally exporting tobacco products to his country. He disclosed that a large part of the shipments goes through the porous southern border. In this case, the customs service is nearly powerless to pull the plug on smuggling.
This is not the first time Kyrgyzstan has been blamed for large-scale cigarette smuggling in the region. The country shares a common customs space with Kazakhstan within the Eurasia Economic Union and is believed to be reexporting cheap cigarettes to several neighboring countries. In 2019, consulting firm KPMG reported that nearly a third of cigarettes entering Kyrgyzstan are reexported to other parts of Central Asia and Russia, often through various smuggling channels.
Azamat Arapbaev, a member of the Kirgiz Parliament, said that a large share of illegal cigarettes entering the country come from the Middle East, Tajikistan and Serbia while some cigarettes make their way to the market from duty-free stores on the border. He estimated that these supplies have a big impact on the domestic cigarette market, where sales are close to 3.2 billion units per year.
A 2022 study conducted by the think tank IPSOS showed that the share of illegal cigarettes on the domestic market of Kirgizstan is close to 9.5 percent. Kamila Aikultlova, an analyst with IPSOS, estimated that the national budget lost between $6 million and $7 million from illegal trade on the domestic market. Meanwhile, in Tajikistan, illicit cigarettes accounted for a whopping 74.2 percent of retail sales in 2021, according to Nielsen.
The future of the Kazakhstan tobacco market is tightly linked with a proposal, published by the healthcare ministry in early 2023, to ban vapes. Alibek Kuantirov, the economy minister, backed the initiative, claiming that the Kazakhstan society favored this idea. He promised that tobacco-heating devices would not be banned. Still, Olga Krutova, an analyst with local publication MK, assumed that the restrictions in this field would give further impetus to the growth of the illegal tobacco market.

In some parts of Central Asia, illicit cigarette account for 75 percent of the market.
An Island of Deficit
Things on the cigarette market look different in Turkmenistan, one of the poorest countries in the post-Soviet space, where smokers struggle to find affordable cigarettes. In 2016, the government imposed a ban on selling cigarettes in private stores, restricting the trade to state stores. Turkmenistan aims to become the world’s first tobacco-free country by 2025, though not everyone is happy with that goal.
News outlets report that people must wait in queues stretching for hundreds of meters for a rare opportunity to buy cheap cigarettes for TMT50 ($14) to TMT60. In 2021, the release of a long-awaited cigarette brand provoked stampedes, fights and detentions in several regions.
“A huge number of people gathered in front of the store in the Zheleznodorozhnik microdistrict of Turkmenabad, and even the police could not keep order,” said one of the customers who described those events to the foreign press. “Two people in line got sick. In the pandemonium, several shop windows were smashed. The store started dispensing cigarettes at 7 a.m., and people were standing in line 10 [hours to] 12 hours before that.”
Turkmenistan remains a closed country even by the standards of authoritarian Central Asia, so there are no reliable statistics pertaining to actual cigarette consumption. Occasional reports describe cases of smuggling and the existence of various underground cigarette workshops. Some citizens try to grow tobacco on their land plots for personal consumption, though frown on the practice.
August 1, 2023
Teatime

Photo: cook_inspire
Sales of herbal heated-tobacco sticks are growing in Europe.
By Stefanie Rossel
They’re called Anita, Leme or Nexus, and they come in flavors such as chocolate, banana, coffee and strong menthol: Herbal heat-not-burn (HnB) sticks are becoming increasingly popular in European markets. Instead of tobacco, they use black tea leaves as a carrier material, which is infused with aromas and may or may not be laced with nicotine. The sticks are used with regular tobacco-heating devices. Most of the herbal consumables are compatible with heating-blade systems, like the original IQOS.
Albeit still a tiny niche of the market, the segment is growing—and it is fragmented. In a recently published report, TobaccoIntelligence noted that an internet search for the term “herbal stick” in five European languages yielded almost 900 products across 31 websites.
Containing no tobacco, herbal HnB consumables fall into a regulatory grey area, particularly if they are nicotine-free, according to Barnaby Page, editorial director at Tamarind Intelligence, the publisher of TobaccoIntelligence. “When the EU Tobacco Products Directive [TPD2] was first devised, nobody had anticipated these products,” he says. “So while there is some general regulation that covers things such as packaging and labeling, they don’t have the kind of stringent requirements applied to them that most tobacco products do.”
Looking at compatible herbal HnB sticks in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and the U.K., TobaccIntelligence identified 19 brands. In all countries except the Czech Republic, nicotine-free consumables are more prevalent than those containing nicotine. The highest number of such products is found in Hungary, which has a big market for heated-tobacco products (HTPs). According to TobaccoIntelligence, only in Lithuania and Japan did HTPs account for a greater share of the overall tobacco market in 2022. According to Page, the success of herbal HnB products in Hungary may simply be a response to the pricing of HTPs there. The U.K., a vape market, had the fewest number of herbal HnB products but ranked second in terms of unique brands found.
Healcier was the most commonly searched for herbal HnB brand on the internet in the five countries investigated by TobaccoIntelligence, followed by Heccig and Nuso. On average, there are eight different flavors per brand, with fruit flavors and cooling flavors, such as menthol or mint, being most sought after. The sticks retail at an average price of €4.40 ($4.79) per pack of 20 and are cheapest in Poland and most expensive in Germany, with average retail prices of €3.30 and €6.20, respectively.
Across all five countries analyzed, the average price of a pack of compatible herbal heat sticks was lower than the recommended retail price of a pack of IQOS Heets, with the largest difference detected in Hungary, where the herbal alternatives are on average €1.15 cheaper than IQOS consumables. Because they don’t contain tobacco, tea-based products avoid tobacco taxes and are subject only to value-added taxes.
The herbal sticks are sold at tobacconists, vape stores, supermarkets and convenience stores and through online channels, such as online marketplaces, social media sites or the brands’ own online shops. They are also available on all eight of Amazon’s country-specific EU websites. Most products come with their own branded heating device but are also compatible with existing heating devices.
Low Entry Barriers
The market for herbal combustibles is opportunistic, according to Page. “It’s no dramatic kind of paradigm shift in the way the e-cigarette was or even in the way of heated tobacco,” he says. “It’s a way of taking advantage of specific market needs and a specific regulatory situation.” Entry barriers for manufacturers are low and not dissimilar to the e-cigarette model. “It’s like producing e-liquids—something you can do on a very small scale,” says Page. “You don’t have to tool out vastly complicated factories.”
In terms of construction, the consumables resemble HTP units. The products feature a cotton core mouthpiece followed by a cooling unit made from food-grade silicone and, at the stick’s end, the tea leaves, which contain a combination of vegetable glycerin, propylene glycol, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate. Their nicotine content ranges between 0 percent and 4 percent.
Of the 19 brands TobaccoIntelligence analyzed, seven had both nicotine and non-nicotine variants; seven featured only non-nicotine sticks, and five featured only nicotine-containing consumables. The number of flavor options ranges from two to 18 per brand, according to the report, which found a total of 112 different flavors.
Such variety will soon present herbal heating products with competitive advantage. On Oct. 23, nontobacco-flavored HTPs will become illegal throughout the EU. The potential success of herbal alternatives may be short-lived, however. A revised version of the directive, TPD3, is expected to be released in 2024. Page expects the EU to broaden the definition of covered products.
“Anything including herbal sticks would fall in it,” he says. “Tobacco regulators used to consider tobacco and nicotine as undistinguishable synonyms. Obviously, this has changed in the last decade. So nicotine has to be seen as a separate category than tobacco. TPD3 is not likely to target herbal consumables directly but as part of an overarching framework.”
That said, it will be challenging for authorities to regulate products that contain neither tobacco nor nicotine. “How do you sensibly bring it into a regime?” he asks. “You are essentially inhaling the vapor of tea. I don’t see how you can rationally regulate a flavored nicotine-free product as being a tobacco product because it simply isn’t one.”
In a Grey Zone
Depending on the way they are marketed, nicotine-free herbal sticks might escape regulation. Because they are not subject to tobacco regulation, manufacturers of herbal heated sticks are free to make all sorts of claims about their products, though they are of course still subject to general consumer laws.
On their websites, companies operating in the segment emphasize that without tobacco, their herbal sticks—at least the nicotine-free varieties—present a lower risk of addiction than tobacco products.
In addition, they claim tea leaves are not treated with the same harmful chemicals that are frequently found in commercially available tobacco products, resulting in a less toxic product. Also, unlike tobacco heat sticks, herbal alternatives leave no unpleasant tobacco smell. And because herbal sticks allow users to mimic the hand-mouth action of smoking, they may make it easier for consumers to wean themselves off the “hazardous and addictive” consumption of tobacco, according to herbal HnB companies.
Herbal consumables may offer a “unique and pleasurable alternative to tobacco regarding taste and experience,” in the words of one vendor, and manufacturers frequently highlight how “natural” the aromas are.
A look at Amazon customer reviews of these products, however, is sobering: Some users complain about flavor and unpleasant side effects, saying, for instance, that the products taste like black leaves and that the taste becomes unbearable after four or five puffs. Others mention headaches and nausea. Page says he is unaware of any scientific research into the health impact of herbal sticks.
As for the growth opportunities of the category, Page says he would be surprised if tobacco manufacturers ventured into this small market. “We do know that they have looked to cannabis for obvious reasons, though,” he says. “Perhaps we will see a second or third generation development of herbal sticks from them.”
The argument that low-nicotine or non-nicotine herbal products may help smokers quit nicotine consumption certainly is a point to be considered in this context. Currently, tobacco manufacturers only offer consumables featuring a constant nicotine strength.
Page expects sales of herbal consumables to grow in Europe after the EU ban on flavored HTPs takes effect. “Regulators permitting, I could also see herbal sticks being taken up in the U.S.,” he says.
Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.

August 1, 2023
Correcting The Record

Photo: Yeti Studio
Targeting tobacco risk communications
By Cheryl Olson
On August 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products will take live comments from the public to help develop its five-year strategic plan. One of the strategic goal areas involves improving public health via knowledge: “timely, clear and accessible health communications and education to diverse public audiences.” Along with discouraging youth initiation, the CTP wants to “encourage cessation and to inform adults who smoke about the relative risks of tobacco products.”
This is welcome news. Misinformation is killing people. For example, U.S. cigarette users who believe nicotine is harmful to health are less likely to try nicotine-replacement therapies (NRTs) or e-cigarettes to help them quit and (no surprise) are less likely to quit successfully.
“If someone believes that using reduced-risk products is just as bad as smoking, why bother switching?” says Jeffrey S. Smith, a senior fellow in harm reduction at R Street Institute in Washington, D.C.
Let’s help the CTP get rolling. What tobacco-related misconceptions deserve immediate attention? And which groups are in particularly dire need of lifesaving actionable knowledge due to persistently high smoking rates and low quit rates? I asked several colleagues for their nominations.
Dangerous Misinformation
Confusion about tobacco product relative risks is a huge concern. Clifford Douglas, who directs the Tobacco Research Network at the University of Michigan, alerted me to an article he and six distinguished experts wrote recently for the journal Addiction. It responds to the U.S. Surgeon General, who called stopping the spread of trust-destroying health misinformation “a moral and civic imperative.” The article targets two huge myths about e-cigarette risks that federal authorities unfortunately helped promote and failed to correct.
First is misinformation about e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI), which turned out to be linked instead to vaping illicit THC products. The authors contrast the CDC’s approach to EVALI to its handling of food-related illness outbreaks. With lettuce-linked listeria, authorities are quick to share brands, dates and locations of concern, which products are probably safe and when to stop worrying. That hasn’t happened with EVALI. Not even the name has been corrected, perpetuating confusion among researchers, clinicians and the public.
The second myth is the persistent insistence that youth e-cigarette use is a gateway to smoking. Not only is evidence lacking for a causal link, but studies support the reverse: that vaping reduces youth smoking rates. This information has not been shared by health authorities.
“I’ve heard researchers tell me that we still don’t know the relative harm of e-cigarettes compared to smoking,” says Bethea (Annie) Kleykamp, assistant professor in psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “I’ve seen [healthcare] providers very nervous about talking about harm reduction at all. I don’t know if that’s because they’re misinformed or they’re reading information that is different from what I’m reading.”
Smith, a brain researcher with deep experience in both academia and industry, shares these concerns. “I could understand this error if it was coming from nonscientists,” he says. “But it is in the messaging from academics, policymakers and national health organizations.”
He is frustrated by the way the link between smoking and nicotine is used to tar all reduced-risk products. “If cigarettes contain nicotine, then any nicotine-containing product must be equally bad,” is how he sums up that mistaken theme.
As a neuroscientist, Smith sees an additional overlooked benefit from correcting misperceptions of nicotine. “The potential of nicotine to improve health in nonsmokers has really lagged behind due to its association to smoking,” he says. If nicotine could be destigmatized, research may lead to treatments for traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease and age-related memory loss.
The Greatest Need
“Diverse public audiences” who smoke and die at unacceptably high rates should get top priority attention from the FDA. These include people in custody and persons with serious mental illnesses.
At the University of Maryland, Kleykamp works with a long-established Baltimore addiction clinic. Smoking rates are at 70 percent or higher among people with opioid use disorder (OUD).
“A little over half of people in addiction treatment will actually die of tobacco-related disease, not other addictions,” she says. People with OUD seldom quit smoking with prescription medicines or NRTs. Preliminary evidence suggests that e-cigarettes may be a more acceptable substitute.
Kleykamp notes that addiction professionals typically focus on immediate risks: stabilizing patients and making sure they don’t overdose. And for younger patients who smoke, the biggest tobacco dangers are decades down the line. But the pattern is changing.
“A lot of patients in opioid treatment are aging,” Kleykamp notes. “In our clinic, over 50 percent are over 55 and above. So tobacco harm reduction is becoming equally urgent.”
Kleykamp’s other research focus is on longtime adult cigarette users. Among Americans over age 65 who smoke, quit rates have been stagnant since the turn of the century.
“Older adults who smoke are the least informed on relative harms and more likely to think that nicotine is a cause of cancer,” says Kleykamp. “Yet they are the most likely to get the cancer and heart disease.”
There is little research on how to change the minds and behaviors of longtime smokers. Kleykamp is working to fill that gap. She’s preparing to publish research based on the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study data from adults aged 55-plus who have smoked for decades. In this sample, more people had tried e-cigarettes than had tried NRT. Based on such findings, Kleykamp speculates that longtime smokers “don’t want to use these medicines. They want something that’s more the look and feel of a cigarette.”
“It seems to me that if you smoke that long and have difficulty quitting and don’t want to quit, then a product that replaces the nicotine and is pleasurable is your best hope,” she says.
Wanted: Consistency and Trust
From studies and expert opinions, one message is clear: We need consistent, clear messaging on the relative risk of smoking. Kleykamp thinks that the FDA is a trusted source of information for researchers and healthcare providers. She would like to see educational interventions geared toward providers on the basics: nicotine’s non-role in cancer, and the tobacco product continuum of risk.
For the larger public, the FDA may need to work through other avenues. Surveys suggest that many Americans, and particularly people who smoke, don’t trust information from the FDA or the Centers for Disease Control.
“Aging and tobacco use is correlated with being not white and low socioeconomic status, so you also have a correlation with historic mistrust of providers,” Kleykamp says. “An interaction with a clinician that they trust could help. Maybe in the context of a relationship that’s already been built.”
Smith also advocates one-to-one education. “I think the medical and public health community could be the source of credible information, but on the local level, not large and expensive national campaigns,” he says. “I feel that there is mistrust everywhere. And without personal connection, it will be hard to drive change.”
Smith would like to see this consistent message coming from all sources: “Combustion is the problem, not nicotine. Stop smoking—through any means, quit or switch—and your health will improve.”
Finally, he calls for more communication among researchers. “I would argue today that regardless of source—academic, regulatory or industry—the only way to solve the health problems that exist around smoking is to listen, argue, discuss, agree and disagree as a single scientific community,” says Smith. “Science is what will drive change.”
Cheryl K. Olson is a California-based public health researcher who specializes in behavioral health issues and consults on tobacco product behaviors via McKinney Regulatory Science Advisors. She spent 15 years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.

August 1, 2023
Novelties for Novel Products

Photo: Cerulean
Cerulean has expanded its range of next-generation nicotine product testing equipment.
By Stefanie Rossel
As the nicotine industry and its regulators continue to focus on novel nicotine products, it is no surprise that reduced-risk product testing receives a lot of attention in instrumentation suppliers’ R&D departments.
“We are still in many ways ignorant of the impact of the aerosol from vapes and heated-tobacco products (HTPs) on respiratory systems, especially when the aerosols are laced with flavors that are safe for ingestion but not necessarily so when dosed to the lung,” explains Ian Tindall, head of innovation and marketing at Cerulean, a U.K.-based supplier of precision test and measurement equipment that belongs to the Coesia group. “This sort of work is needed for regulatory submissions for sure. It is also prudent to be certain that changes in formulation have no unforeseen consequences.”
Cerulean has been developing testing equipment for HTPs and e-cigarettes, cannabis vaping and modern oral nicotine recently. For HTPs, Cerulean has a comprehensive suite of products that is either already available or will be released this year. Tindall says Cerulean has launched a couple of new machines specifically for toxicological testing of HTPs this year. “One is a budget model—the CETI5 that produces a constant aerosol from HTPs and includes pre-activation options for HTPs plus puff control, angled use, button pressing and so on,” he says. “Unusually it uses a five-puff engine configuration, which removes the necessity for moving valves and items under test. We think of this as an entry model to the world of aerosol generation for toxicology studies.”
“CETI” stands for Cerulean E-Cigarette Testing Instrument and is the name of a whole range of products that can be used not only to test HTPs but also to assess e-cigarettes and cannabis vape products. The CETI5’s continuous exhaust is created by synchronizing the puff engines to sequentially exhaust and generate a constant flow of aerosol—a feature highly desirable for toxicological exposure studies. Users can program a puffing routine to establish deliveries from various e-cigarette, cannabis vape and HTP devices. The angled vaping option is meant to mimic human use. In line with recommended regimes for HTPs and vape products, the CETI5’s regimes can be configured for different puff volumes, puff duration and puff interval.
HTP Assessment
The CETI CF, meanwhile, features a more conventional rotary-type setup with a moving valve. According to Tindall, it is considerably more sophisticated in terms of the analytical options available, including impingers and electrostatic precipitator traps as well as air-liquid interface exposure systems. “The software is more flexible with a full traceability package, which is quite important for regulatory submissions.”
The CETI CF is a continuous-flow, five-channel vaping machine that complies with ISO20768:2018. It is designed to run as a continuous aerosol generation device through the use of the dual piston pump situated at the heart of the machine. The pump, which can pull puff volumes of 35 mL to 150 mL, switches between inlet and outlet, creating a continuous aerosol that can be delivered to any target system required. The glass construction of the dual pump and its ease of removal allows for thorough cleaning, thereby minimizing cross-contamination between runs. The CETI CF comes with a fully capable interface that is simple to use, includes security features and can be interfaced with a laboratory information management system.
In addition to developing new machinery, Cerulean has added to its X-ray measurement a capability that looks inside sticks and measures hidden parameters by offering the facility that the company has on its Quantum Neo test station for 150 mm-long rods X-rayed as part of a suite of measurements. “We have separated this [function] out and come up with a stand-alone X-ray system in the Solo Q device,” says Tindall. “It has all the safety features you would expect as well as a user interface tablet that can be removed from the stack for easier handling.”
Instrumentation for assessing HTPs is presently most sought after by customers, according to Tindall. “HTPs are simply the big kid on the block,” he says. “The designs are settling down—although if you look at the array of patents being published, you may argue differently. Key quality measurements seem to be those measured after the combiner has done its job. Standard equipment can mostly ensure component manufacture is correct. Hollow acetate tubes have required some different inspection that we introduced last year, but essentially, this is all pretty standard stuff. The combiner is where everything comes together, and here, any defect in construction will impact the consumer experience, so this is where innovation in test equipment is focused. The X-ray system is one example of finding a solution to investigating potential construction faults. Another is the addition of a closed-loop control to the combiner or maker.”
A Rising Star
The up-and-coming field in quality assurance (QA) is modern oral. “The principles look simple, but QA testing is still a bit hit-and-miss,” says Tindall. “As these pouches become more sophisticated with different contents, capsules, formats and colors, this is going to be an expanding market.”
In early 2022, Cerulean launched Orion, the first automated test station for snus, which measures the weight, length and width and the tensile strength of the pouch seams as well as extension against load. “To date, we are very pleased with the impact Orion is making in the marketplace, and we have struggled to get enough machines directly in front of customers,” says Tindall. “One of the bizarre things for us has been [that] when we talk about testing pouched products, we get mixed responses. When we show the equipment, almost universally the interest transforms, and we end up adding a new name to the list of people wanting to trial the equipment.”
Cerulean has further developed Orion by adding a moisture measurement station. “This was specifically designed for pouches with more than 15 percent moisture, as many of the white snus pouches have,” says Tindall. “It is quick and is part of the automation and so complements standalone systems that may be slower or more suitable for dry pouches. We have some further ideas for quality parameter checking and are developing the fundamental technologies, but these will not reach maturity for 18 months.”
Cannabis is Cerulean’s third priority, according to Tindall, but a lack of legislative drivers and a volatile market make it difficult to effectively serve a potential customer base. “We published a suite of white papers, available on our website, with our Denver-based partner Kaycha Laboratory, which were all concerned with THC aerosol generation specifically for capture and subsequent metals analysis, as specified by the Colorado state regulators,” he says. “We showed, with Kaycha, that we needed specific conditions to get high THC content liquids into the aerosol phase, and we developed a specialist heater jacket that we made available in our catalogue that keeps the THC oil liquid warm, allowing a low viscosity for analytical experiments. We then worked with Kaycha on a capture system because electrostatic trapping simply does not work. In the end, we sourced low metal content quartz capture pads for Kaycha, and they can now effectively report the limited selection of metals in aerosol that Colorado requires.”
The company also made improvements to its THP and cannabis testing products. “We have added the heater jacket for cannabis products, which fits on any of our smoking and vaping machines,” says Tindall. “And we have launched the CETI1, a simple single-channel vaping machine for research projects. It retains all the features of more sophisticated machines without the typical high cost.”
Among the innovations was also an enclosure for the CETI8, an eight-channel vaping instrument, to capture any fugitive emissions. The hood covers only the operational portion of the machine, comes with several filters and allows for a complete air exchange within two minutes. According to Cerulean, the enclosure is effective at stopping unwanted odors from reaching users. Furthermore, it mitigates the ingress of contaminants to laboratory surfaces. “It came about after our portfolio manager, Helen Taylor, and I were working in a cannabis lab and realized that at the end of the day, our heads were singing from low-level exposure to cannabis aerosol,” says Tindall with a smile.
Cerulean has two big releases planned for the fourth quarter of this year, but Tindall is quick to stress the company’s continued support for exiting equipment. “It’s always fun to talk of new products and market opportunities, but we must not forget that there is a hell of a lot of equipment still in use from years past, and we make a point of supporting the needs of those customers as well,” he says. “That is why, on top of our service team and technical support team, we are actively ensuring that equipment can be modernized through upgrades so that a machine maybe bought 10 years ago can be updated to a current specification with all that implies for the changing face of our industry.”
Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.

August 1, 2023
Technology Titan

Photo: ICCPP
Since its inception in 2014, ICCPP has had a steady focus on technology and innovation in vaping.
TR Staff Report
This year marks 20 years of development in the vaping industry. During this time, the industry has progressed rapidly from early basic products to today’s more technologically advanced systems alongside innovations in manufacturing and standardization. The vaping industry is expected to be valued at $24.61 billion this year. In the world of e-cigarettes, numerous companies have experienced highs and lows. Some survived; many did not. However, ICCPP Group, the parent company of Voopoo, has grown steadily in its mission to offer a “healthier and happier life” through its dedication to technological innovation.
Today, ICCPP’s products and solutions have been marketed in more than 70 countries worldwide, covering 100,000 brick-and-mortar outlets serving over 36 million consumers. Founded in 2014, ICCPP Group has been deeply committed to scientific and technological innovation. ICCPP leadership says the foundation of its success is adhering to user-centered and talent-driven concepts. Many ICCPP products have gained popularity among consumers over the years, such as its innovative Drag system, the first instant-inhaling vaping product that changed user habits with its 0.025-second igniting speed in 2017.
The company is also known for its Vinci series, which debuted in 2019, that represented the birth of a new product category: the Pod Mod. ICCPP is neither the largest nor the oldest company in the industry, but it is one of the most advanced. The company has grown from fewer than 50 staff members in 2014 to more than 4,000 employees in 2023. This level of success has the industry asking many questions, such as: How did ICCPP quickly grow from a small company to a key influencer? How did ICCPP become the company responsible for many of the products that influenced the future of the industry? How does ICCPP keep its products competitive?
Always Adhering to Innovation
Innovation is nothing new to ICCPP. “Since the day of establishment, innovation has always been the DNA of ICCPP,” explains Everest Zhao, co-founder and CEO of ICCPP Group, who has more than 10 years of experience in the vape industry. In 2014, when ICCPP was just established in China, it mainly provided technical solutions for e-cigarette companies. It then began moving forward with major investments in R&D and the creation of advanced products and vaping systems.
In 2016, ICCPP proposed a creative solution to one of its customers. It was the predecessor of the Drag, which aimed to completely change the vaper’s habit of “igniting before using.” However, the customer did not accept the changes and insisted on a traditional solution. This incident deeply touched the founding team, according to Zhao. “It is hard for a supplier to ensure the overall quality and the user experience,” he said. “If we don’t solve the user’s pain point, don’t control the trend of technology, don’t break through the bottleneck of the industry, we can’t be seen as a company that really respects the user.”
In 2017, ICCPP created its own brand, Voopoo. The revolutionary instant-inhaling device Drag swept the global market after its introduction. Additionally, the ignition speed of 0.025 seconds broke the industry’s speed ceiling and received wide praise from global users. The Drag series won the global sales championship for two consecutive years, which had a profound impact on the whole industry, according to Zhao.
In 2019, ICCPP successfully developed a new product category with the first intelligent electronic atomization device, Vinci, which allowed e-liquid and nicotine salts to be utilized within one device. It successfully filled an industry gap and brought the arrival of Pod Mod, the miniaturized version of the traditional vape Mod. In addition to frequent innovations in open systems, ICCPP was also instrumental in the development of closed system products.
In 2021, ICCPP’s replaceable product hit the market with an innovative human-computer interactive smart screen and CNC technology design. The disposable product reached the overseas sales mark of 1 million pieces in two weeks after its initial launch. Subsequently, it won not only many industry awards in Britain, the United States and other markets but also the praise of many consumers.
From the perspective of ICCPP, the company is “a late bird” compared to its peers, according to Zhao. “Our strategy is not to compete for speed in a 500-meter race or for endurance in [a] 3,000-meter race but to compete for completion in a 10,000-meter race. No matter the investment in R&D, or reserve of talents, ICCPP is always at the forefront of the industry,” he said.
In the early stages of ICCPP’s development, the company owned less than 40 patents. In 2020, the number of patents filed by the company exceeded 400, and in 2021, it exceeded 600. To date, the total number of patents filed by ICCPP has exceeded 2,000. The growth cannot be separated from ICCPP’s dedication to innovative employees. ICCPP Group invests no less than 10 percent of its yearly profits in R&D, according to Zhao.
In 2019, to improve its own R&D capabilities, ICCPP cooperated with several universities to carry out research on innovative materials and set up a materials research institute, focusing on the development and application of new electronic atomization materials. To achieve a breakthrough of heating materials, ICCPP persevered through 1,000 days of research and 2,000 groups of material formulas, underwent 120 days of cyclic testing, passed more than 1,000 evaluations by global atomization enthusiasts, developed 100,000 pieces of product samples and, in 2021, developed its nano-microcrystalline ceramic core called Gene Tree.
At the Vaper Expo U.K. 2022, ICCPP launched the industry’s first use of a ceramic core in disposable products and multi-category ceramic core solutions. At present, ICCPP has built four research institutes with more than 500 R&D staff, and the Everest Lab, which has been accredited by the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment, is becoming one of the few laboratories recognized by national authority in the electronic atomization industry.
Pioneering ESG Strategy
Sustainable development and corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies are becoming an increasingly important issue for the vaping industry. ICCPP plans to release its first ESG report and carbon footprint certification for three products this year. During GTNF 2022, held in Washington, D.C., ICCPP shared on stage a series of their research results in green product innovation and digital transformation. Its environmentally friendly product gained widespread attention.
As early as 2019, ICCPP started working on environmentally friendly products, and in 2020, it launched the first disposable product made of biodegradable materials, which won a Red Dot Award in 2021. At the Vaper Expo U.K. 2023, the ICCPP ODM+ business made a technological upgrade and launched the world’s first new dual environmentally friendly disposable vape solution called the Cyclo series. It is the first combined concept of detachable parts and biodegradable materials—far ahead of the rest of the vaping industry in achieving portability and recyclability.
Cyclo, starting from the concept of low carbon and environmental protection, considers the whole life cycle of disposables from the design, production, usage and disposal to recycling, trying its best to use biodegradable materials for the body, a unique lead-less design for assembly and a patented weld-less structure that is fully detachable so all the device’s disposable waste can be easily dismantled, according to ICCPP. This allows for direct disposal with the ability to sort and recycle, thus minimizing the harm to the environment. Many industry experts have commented that Cyclo should be the best choice to meet the environmental challenges in the vaping industry.
Developing environmentally friendly products is just one small part of ICCPP’s ESG strategy. The company officially launched its Digital Transformation Strategy in May 2022 and became the world’s first electronic atomization enterprise to collaborate with SAP and PwC, leading the industry into the digital transformation stage.
“In the future, we will create an unprecedented digital closed loop and a new type of digital competitiveness, getting through the complete path of digital R&D, digital manufacturing, digital marketing and so on,” said Zhao. “We will take the lead in driving corporate development through digitalization and realizing new value creation through digitalization.
“We have always been a firm that advocates and practices within the ‘open industry’ ecology. We are willing to share our resources and achievements with the whole industry. We hope all members of the vaping industry will grow together in a healthy way. We are looking forward to working together with like-minded partners to build an open ecosystem and reshape the future of the industry.”
August 1, 2023
The Breakdown

Photo: ANDS
The vaping industry is making progress in reducing the environmental impact of single-use e-cigarettes.
By George Gay
The U.K. vaping industry is under notice in respect of single-use vapes. It has, according to one politician with considerable knowledge of the industry, a “window of opportunity” to defend itself against those demanding a ban on these products—a window that could slam shut at any moment.
Pressure is building for a ban mainly on grounds of the negative environmental impact of single-use vapes, an issue that cannot be brushed aside. But, as always, those opposed to these products, and vapes in general, are muddying the waters with issues to do with illicit products, underage use and consumer safety: important issues but ones that should be dealt with separately.
But the good news is that disposing of used single-use vapes is possible in a reasonably environmentally friendly manner. On July 17, Waste Experts launched a report, The Challenges of Recycling Single-Use Vapes, in which it said, in part, that two products it tested, a widely available plastic and aluminium vape and a new cardboard-based entry, both demonstrated high levels of recyclability. The company, which has been operating in the environmental services sector for more than 22 years, also said that, when collected and sent to an Approved Authorized Treatment Facility, both products were able to meet the U.K. Recycling and Recovery Targets under Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations.
The Waste Experts report was commissioned by ANDS, which is a leading brand owner and supplier of alternative nicotine-delivery products in the Middle East and which, as ANDS Globe U.K., is currently entering the U.K. market for single-use vapes with SLIX, a product whose outer casing of high-grade card screams recyclable.
Indeed, in a press note introducing SLIX, which was one of the brands tested by Waste Experts, ANDS said this product was 99 percent recyclable and recoverable and that the company was on course to increase this level of recyclability and recoverability by the end of this year. As I understand it, the technology underpinning such products is advancing at speed with the elimination of wires and, importantly, with battery design improvements.
Other brand owners also have been focusing on the environmental credentials of their products and even on the way in which used products are collected for recycling. At the same time, waste treatment companies are innovating the methods they employ in handling products, including single-use vapes, and are providing recyclability feedback loops to assist vape manufacturers and brand owners in the choice of materials and product designs that better meet their environmental aspirations.
A Ways to Go
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to give the impression that the vape industry has cracked the environment issue, especially in respect of single-use products. This is the final sentence of the Executive Summary of the Waste Experts report: “So whilst single-use vapes have a short lifespan and are not environmentally the best option, when collected and treated through authorized routes, the materials can be recycled and recovered correctly.”
With some justification, those calling for a ban on single-use vapes would no doubt see this sentence as admitting that the collection and processing of used products is simply a way of treating the symptoms of the problem. I assume they would also argue that the sentence suggests that only a ban could treat the cause of the problem.
Those promoting a ban might also look askance at the environmental claims in respect of processing used single-use vapes. The recycling and recovery categories talked about largely in respect of such products are only in third and fourth place on the five-place waste hierarchy described in the Waste Experts report: prevention (using less material and making the product last longer), reuse (reusing products with minor refurbishments or repairs), recycling (converting waste materials into new products), recovery (recovering energy through incineration, gasification or anaerobic digestion) and disposal (landfill and incineration without recovery).
The other point that those calling for a ban are bound to pick up on is the “when collected” qualification in the Waste Energy executive summary. As I understand it, only a tiny percentage of single-use vapes are disposed of properly, with most going to landfill. This should come as no surprise, however. Apparently, many distributors and retailers of small consumer electronics are still not aware of their obligations under WEEE even though it has been in force for more than 15 years.
Additionally, most vapers have been recruited from the ranks of smokers, and a significant number of smokers have over the years shown scant regard for the environment. Cigarette-butt litter has had a constant presence on our streets and in our waterways for decades, and no amount of appeals to consumers seem to have convinced them of the need to dispose of butts responsibly.
Multiuse Products
This might be overly pessimistic because there clearly are differences between cigarette butts and used single-use vapes and, in respect of the latter, it would presumably be much easier, for instance, to introduce deposit and return schemes. But I cannot help being concerned that there are few differences between cigarette and vape consumers, or between those consumers and most people, who seem to be unwilling to make modest changes to their habits even in the face of an existential climate crisis.
Even some leading lights in the vape industry are not necessarily opposed to a ban on single-use vapes. Interviewed on BBC radio news, Doug Mutter, the chief executive of VPZ, a leading vape retailer and manufacturer of vape liquids, expressed some interesting ideas about how to address the issues surrounding single-use vapes and, in particular, explained how his company was working successfully to transition consumers from single-use to multiuse products. But elsewhere, he has been quoted as saying that he would not oppose a ban provided it did not lead to a black market—or, presumably, did not stoke the black market already in operation.
Muddying the Debate
This was a canny remark that, to my way of thinking, pointed up more than one issue. The first is that government austerity measures over the past 13 years have reduced the U.K.’s ability to control the influx and sale of illicit products, something that has created an unlevel playing field on which some vape companies are paying to join the producer compliance schemes required under WEEE provisions while others are not.
But it also points up another issue: the fact that the debate about the impact of single-use vapes on the environment is constantly muddied with talk about illicit products and sales to young people, both of which are policing issues, not environment issues. Some of the stories currently doing the rounds in the media, even in those media outlets many would consider reliable, are awash with what seems to be deliberately misleading information about vaping among young people.
Partly as a result of such stories, I assume, pressure is building behind a ban on single-use vapes by the U.K. government, and that pressure could build quickly. These are dangerous times for the industry because the ruling Conservative Party in the U.K. is struggling with its popularity ratings ahead of a general election next year; so, with vaping a minority sport, the party and government might see some electoral benefit in acquiescing to such a ban, especially since the government’s overall environmental focus has been dimmed in recent times because it seems to take the climate crisis as a long-term problem that can be addressed down the road.
Single-use vapes are particularly vulnerable to a ban because, while they are largely the same as multiuse vapes in that they contain difficult-to-handle nicotine and batteries, their volumes, and potential volumes, make them an easy target. While those opposed to vaping in general find themselves on difficult ground when faced with the argument that vaping is providing for many people a route out of the highly risky smoking habit, they probably feel they are on firmer ground when it comes to single-use products. They might concede that vapes serve a useful purpose but question the need for single-use products, and they are unlikely to be persuaded by arguments about the latter providing a more cost-effective and convenient option for consumers than other products.
Nevertheless, ANDS deserves credit for commissioning the Waste Experts report, which was launched at an event held in the Terrace Pavilion of the U.K.’s Houses of Parliament and was hosted by the Conservative Member of Parliament Mark Pawsey, who, as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Vaping, has been active during many years in trying to encourage a measured debate around vaping and its benefits.
The trouble is that the vaping debate seems to have no ending. It keeps going round and round, like the London Eye ferris wheel that can be seen from the Terrace Pavilion. The Waste Experts report seems to bring closure to one part of the debate, but it is technical stuff and so not likely, in my view, to shift the needle of public opinion.
Only one thing will shift that needle, and that is ensuring the ground is not littered with carelessly discarded single-use vapes, whatever that takes. The public is generally steeped in superficiality; it values the look of the environment over its health. And, by the way, if the aim is to include consumers in this cleanup, it would be a good idea, I think, to warn of the actual dangers posed by batteries but not to over-egg the dangers. Consumers are not going to spend much time wandering around looking for official disposal points if they have been panicked into thinking that the product in their back pocket is liable to explode or catch fire.
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.

August 1, 2023
The Promise of Synthetic Nicotine

Photo: Oksana Fedorchuk
As consumer demand for healthier and more environmentally friendly alternatives to combustible cigarettes increases, we should expect greater focus on the benefits of this man-made alternative.
By Derek Yach
Tobacco-derived nicotine has been the sole source of nicotine used by pharmaceutical and tobacco companies until recently. The naming of the sector (tobacco sector), the naming of companies (British American Tobacco for example) and the framing of public health policies as tobacco control all show how pervasive and deeply embedded the word tobacco has become despite its scientific name being Nicotiana.
The dominance of tobacco plants started to wane when pharmaceutical companies developed nicotine-replacement therapies (NRTs) as cessation products. That highlighted the fact that while nicotine is addictive, it is not the source of death and disease caused by the products of combustion. The advent of a wide range of consumer-facing products that also use nicotine (especially e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches) to help smokers switch and/or quit has further increased the focus on nicotine.
Initially, there was no debate about the source of nicotine since it was assumed to come from the plant. In recent years, several companies have started using patented laboratory processes to develop nicotine from scratch. Many, like Zanoprima, use green chemistry to convert plant-based molecules into synthetic nicotine. Other companies, such as Contraf-Nicotex-Tobacco (CNT), begin with plant-based molecules used in cosmetics and derived from vitamin B.
Nicotine, like many molecules, exists in two orientations: S-nicotine and R-nicotine; however, nicotine that occurs naturally in the tobacco plant is entirely S-nicotine. Prior to the popularization of synthetic nicotine, this distinction had not been of great practical importance due to its naturally occurring form. Pharmaceutical-grade synthetic nicotine manufacturers such as CNT and Njoy therefore treat R-nicotine as a byproduct of the S-nicotine manufacturing process while Zanoprima’s patented process does not produce R-nicotine at all. Other manufacturers may use methods that may well not meet the high-quality standards of the pharmaceutical industry.
What Benefits Does It Bring to Consumers and the Environment?
Consumers increasingly demand information about the supply chain of end products. Leading food companies have led in being transparent about the source of all ingredients in their products with a shift toward those where labor conditions on the farm are known, addition of chemicals are reported, water and greenhouse gas use associated with products are made public and the traceability of food product ingredients is independently audited. Investors are more likely to invest in companies with sound records on these issues.
So it will be for all future nicotine products.
For many combustible users, the incentive to switch to a reduced-risk product usually starts with a desire to lower health risks. But for a considerable number, environmental issues are fast becoming reasons to switch, often independent of their health concerns. Again, this has its analogy in the food sector, where companies like Whole Foods have built their main value proposition on an environmental benefit, with health credentials being dubious.
The tobacco industry emits 84 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year, which is equivalent to 0.2 percent of global CO2 emissions, according to researchers at Imperial College London. Of the total, 20.87 million tons of CO2 come from cultivation, and 44.65 million tons of CO2 come from curing, together amounting to 78 percent of all tobacco industry emissions. Synthetic nicotine has the potential to virtually eliminate these.
Synthetic nicotine brings tangible benefits to consumers: A better sensorial experience, assurances about the absence of contaminants and a stamp of quality good enough for pharmaceutical companies, to name a few.
The recent World Health Organization report Tobacco: Poisoning Our Planet paints a vivid picture of the harms of tobacco farming, curing and processing for the environment. More recently, the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World provided a qualitative summary of the potential sources of environmental harm associated with reduced-risk products. Both the WHO and the foundation advocate for the reduction in global tobacco farming, outlining the harms caused by tobacco growth and cultivation on arable land, workers’ rights and malnutrition. It is likely that products created with synthetic nicotine can mitigate many concerns in the product lifecycle. And as companies selling clean nicotine push harder to ensure their products are recyclable and/or reusable, the overall negative environmental footprint will decline further.
Where Is It Likely to Grow Fastest?
Today, synthetic nicotine is used in next-generation nicotine products by emerging nicotine pouch companies like NIIN and by mainstream vape companies like Njoy. This trend is set to continue and will gain traction as e-cigarettes and nicotine pouch companies seek medical licensing using synthetic nicotine.
One example is SMOOD, an up-and-coming next-generation e-cigarette and NRT company based in New York City. SMOOD creates its products as a comprehensive approach to address both health and environmental issues simultaneously. Synthetic nicotine, recyclable hardware and design features to support smokers to quit may well be a signal of what is to come. “We always used nontobacco nicotine due to the absence of minor tobacco alkaloids and metals, both of which are inherent in agricultural production,” says Martin Steinbauer, chief engineer of SMOOD. “Together with repeatable pharmaceutical production processes, nontobacco nicotine improves the toxicological safety of our devices and eliminates carbon emissions, water use and deforestation from tobacco growing. Most importantly, it offers a clean break of nicotine from tobacco finally.”
Snus and heated-tobacco products are unlikely to shift away from tobacco in the medium term but are lowering the health risks of the tobacco they use through processing changes in the case of snus and by eliminating combustion in the case of heated-tobacco products. For decades to come, tobacco plants will be used in these products as well as in combustibles like cigarettes and cigars where a significant demand from consumers is likely to remain even as overall demand declines.
Most major tobacco companies already support farmers to diversify. It will be interesting to watch the dynamic within companies with large and growing reduced-risk portfolios who will continue to sell combustibles even as they shift to reduced-risk products to a greater extent in later numbers for several decades. Altria’s purchase of Njoy, Philip Morris International’s acquisition of Swedish Match and BAT’s dominance in the U.S. vape space all signal that these companies will take a twin track approach to nicotine sourcing.
Who Makes It and How Do They See the Future?
CNT has stated that synthetic nicotine is currently a niche product with enormous potential. “We see enormous demand there and the capacity for the synthesis of chemical is unlimited.”
Zanoprima, the only company to use myosmine as the starting material believe that in time synthetic nicotine will become the main source of nicotine in pharmaceutical products as well as in products likely to be sold as both medically approved cessation products, and as recreational products for ex-smokers to use.
Isn’t It Expensive To Use?
No—prices have been dropping recently and will continue to do so as demand increases.
Conclusion
Health and environmental consumer demand combined with benefits in terms of quality and safety, suggest that synthetic nicotine is set to meet its potential in the coming years.
A global health expert and anti-smoking advocate for more than 30 years, Derek Yach is the owner of Global Health Strategies. Previously, Yach was the director of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World and a World Health Organization cabinet director and executive director for noncommunicable diseases and mental health. He was deeply involved with the development of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

August 1, 2023
Making Their Mark

Illustration: BeMade
RYO and MYO products continue to present remarkable opportunities to the companies supplying these segments.
By George Gay
It has long been debated whether smokers choose roll-your-own (RYO) products over factory-made cigarettes simply because they can save money that way or whether there are other factors in play, most of which revolve around the idea of product customization. One thing that seems certain, however, is that if some smokers want to customize their RYO cigarettes, now is a great time for them to get creative. The product combinations that are possible by putting together the huge range of papers, filters and tobacco now available must be immense and growing.
This is not to say that RYO is about to experience a boom; taxation and regulation will not allow that to happen. But this category, being lifted by the current cost-of-living crisis affecting many people and by the legalization of recreational marijuana use in a growing number of jurisdictions, is likely to punch above its weight for some years to come.
Here, we look at the state of various aspects of the RYO and make-your-own (MYO) sectors: machinery, papers and filters.
Machinery
Anne Laure Jaeckel
Although many cigarettes are hand rolled mainly as a way of saving money, whenever I think of the hand-rolling process, I imagine somebody involved not in an economic activity but in an artistic undertaking. This idea might be a little romantic, however, given that many hand-rolled cigarettes appear less than beautiful, so perhaps I am talking more of a craft than an art, an activity akin to constructing dry stone walls or making hurdle fences, which are often beautifully irregular and, in certain instances at least, economically necessary.
Of course, there is something highly misleading in all this because, unlike the people making dry stone walls and hurdle fences, who are working with crude materials, the person hand rolling a cigarette has in her hands elements that have been produced using advanced designs and technology—elements such as ideally formed, long-stranded fine-cut tobacco and papers and filters fine-tuned for the individual’s preferred choice of cigarette.
And what often gets forgotten is the technology that goes into producing those tiny booklets of hand-rolling papers. They might look simple and insignificant, but the processes necessary to produce them are far from it. Where bobbins of paper have not been pre-gummed, they must have glue applied to one side, they must be cut to length, interleaved, packed into booklets and the booklets included in multi-packs.
And I must confess that, in describing this process, I have paid too little attention to part of the undertaking that is technically challenging: interleaving the cut papers. I was reminded of this when Luc Van de Perre, the founder and owner of BeMade, described how his company had a patented interleaving method, ReadyToRoll, which ensures that when individual leaves are pulled by the consumer from the booklet, the gummed side of the paper always comes out pointing upward. At present, says Van de Perre, 99 percent of paper booklets deliver alternate leaves gummed-side up and then gummed-side down, so half must be turned over by the consumer.
Does this matter? I think it does, if for no other reason than it allows a smoker with impaired vision, who has misplaced her spectacles or is in conditions where the light is poor, to roll a cigarette with confidence. It provides, also, the assurance that she is not going to waste a paper or, even worse, lick the wrong side of a lightweight paper, which will cause it to stick, but only up to a point—that point probably being when the cigarette is lit.
It also demonstrates that even in what some might regard as a backwater segment of the tobacco industry, attention is being paid to the smallest details. The smoker of hand-rolled cigarettes is being treated as important.
In fact, such attention to detail is now at the forefront of BeMade’s activities. The company, which was founded in 2005 and which has a background in booklet production, used that manufacturing experience to develop a fully flexible maker/packer that can produce a full range of booklet formats and pack them in a variety of display boxes. But Van de Perre said that whereas his company had in the past taken machinery projects from start to finish, it was now concentrating on machine developments and installations while working with a bigger partner company in building the machines.
BeMade has also come up with a service strategy recognizing that while its booklet-producing customers are geographically widely spread, it is operating in a relatively modest segment. “Our target is to make sure our customers, booklet producers, get all the tools needed to organize service and maintenance operations in-house or through local support,” said Van de Perre. “This means also that we are prepared to sell the know-how necessary to make our customers independent. All new customers are provided with whatever is necessary to make them self-supporting, though we can also support them via direct web connections to their machines.”

Photo: SWM
Paper
Of course, to produce booklets, you need paper, and, asked about the main RYO market drivers, a spokesperson for SWM and Botani, Anne Laure Jaeckel, product manager of rolling papers at SWM, said the past few years had been all about product research and collaborative developments as their customers had focused on delivering to consumers the best smoking experiences by offering them thinner and lightweight papers. Another important trend had been delivered through developments in botanicals, especially hemp, which had become an essential material in a matter of a few years. In the future, the transparency of papers would be a key feature while the provision of new and exciting colors would also take center stage.
SWM and Botani comprise the Engineered Papers division of Mativ, with SWM serving the tobacco industry and Botani serving the emerging global cannabinoids market.
One question that arises is whether RYO has a future given the array of next-generation tobacco and nicotine products that have emerged recently and given people’s apparent tendency to embrace new technology generally. But Jaeckel seemed unconcerned. While, as always in business, things were changing, this did not signal the end, she said. The change being brought in by the trend toward the legalization of the recreational use of cannabis in many countries was a positive, leading to, among other things, an increase in demand for rolling papers and pre-rolled cones, especially in the U.S. All that was needed now to take things forward in a sustainable way was the introduction of uniform legislation governing product standards.
But some things would remain largely unchanged. For some consumers, RYO had always been and would remain just what they needed—a widely available and cost-effective product. Rolling papers had been invented in the 19th century, and, in part, it was the proof of the product tied up in this history that appealed to many consumers, something to which SWM could attest since its factory in the south of France had been active for 150 years and had witnessed the launch of one of the first rolling paper brands, JOB.
Generally and historically speaking, wood-based bleached materials have gone into making tobacco rolling papers, but Jaeckel said that customers looking to the cannabis market were preferring thin, unbleached, colored or hemp-based papers. Of course, the market for papers, while being strongly influenced by consumer preferences, was also governed by legislation, she added.
The base paper for rolling-papers, Jaeckel said, was supplied in rolls, bobbins and reams, depending on the converting capabilities of customers and on end use applications—for instance, interleaved or flat booklets, or even pre-rolled cones and MYO tubes. All grades of paper could be offered pre-gummed and with filigree patterns, which, along with color options, provided for a wide variety of brand differentiation. And for companies that were only brand owners, SWM and Botani could supply their paper through a network of partner converters capable of transforming it into the required forms.
The range of experiences on offer to the consumer is certainly huge. Indonesia-based The Rolling Paper Company (TRPC), for instance, offers worldwide a wide range of papers, including those made from bleached wood, unbleached wood, unbleached hemp, alfalfa and bamboo. Papers can be watermarked, printed or colored, and the company’s offer also includes blunts, cones and printed cones, all manufactured under one roof using machinery and paper imported from Europe.
TRPC, which has been in business since 2008, produces its own papers under brand names such as SmokeBox but also contract manufactures for other companies.
Ashwyn Daryanani, the founder and owner of TRPC, is confident about the future. In reply to emailed questions, he said the main drivers of the rolling paper business in recent times had been the legalization of the recreational use of marijuana in various jurisdictions and the rising prices of factory-made cigarettes just about everywhere. And, he added, the trends toward the legalization of marijuana use and rising cigarette prices would continue in the future, boosting demand for rolling papers.

Photo: Filtrona
Filters
While Filtrona identifies consumer economics as being the key driver for the MYO category, it sees product customization mainly driving the RYO sector. And the company, which develops and manufactures filters for all types of smoking products, including both the categories under review, predicts that two main factors will drive the RYO/MYO market for the next two years to three years: product customization, and sustainability in respect of both filters and packaging. RYO smokers would be drawn to innovative filter shapes, formats and additives, said Hugo Azinheira, global director of innovation and ESG [environmental, social and governance]. At the same time, there would be a growing need for customized packaging that was more sustainable and that delivered improved product freshness when compared with what was on offer now.
The second driver, meanwhile, meant it was vital for Filtrona to extend its ECO range of filters to RYO/MYO and to work with its packaging suppliers to develop and introduce more sustainable packaging materials.
“The industry’s shift from acetate filters to more sustainable alternatives presents us with one of our biggest opportunities,” said Azinheira in an email exchange. “Our growing ECO range comprises more than 12 innovative plastic-free filters, providing solutions that address single-use plastic bans by using sustainable, biodegradable and plastic-free non-woven materials. All our ECO filters are suitable for use in RYO and reduced-risk product categories as well as ready-made cigarettes.
“We are also working with suppliers to develop and qualify new materials with a lower carbon footprint. We believe that it requires an industry-wide effort to support our customers in their ESG journeys; therefore, we are collaborating with a wide array of suppliers.”
Meanwhile, Azinheira said, because demand for both RYO and, especially, MYO tended to grow when adverse economic environments prevailed, the market for both had been relatively stable during the past five years to six years. But with MYO being a more volatile category, there was higher growth potential in RYO, though both were expected to remain niche categories.
Overall, the RYO and MYO categories would follow the main industry trends, including in respect of the growing cannabis category in North America, for which special filters were being developed and commercialized. While RYO would remain a niche product, demand for it would grow in markets where hemp and cannabis were legalized, but it was important to keep in mind that, within the EU, the new Tobacco Products Directive would impact these new categories.
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.

August 1, 2023
From Plantations to Nicotine ’Plants’

Photo: Taco Tuinstra
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
Researchers, directors, analysts, public health experts and executives should realize that their lives may be very different from those of the consumer they’re studying. | Photo: Taco Tuinstra
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