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In the classical oriental tobacco business, securing supply may prove to be a greater challenge than sustaining demand.
By Taco Tuinstra

Despite the global decline in cigarette consumption, demand for classical oriental tobacco has remained remarkably strong. Prized for its natural aroma, oriental is a key ingredient in the American-blend cigarettes that dominate in Europe and the United States. Cigarette manufacturers in Indonesia, one of the world’s largest tobacco markets by volume, use oriental to manufacture “mild” kreteks. And the leaf seems future-proof to some extent; the leading heat-not-burn product blends are all believed to include oriental tobacco.
On the supply side, cultivation of classical oriental tobaccos is limited to only four countries: Turkey, Greece, Macedonia and Bulgaria. Attempts to produce the leaf outside of the traditional areas—in China and India, for example—have been unsuccessful, due to different soils and climates. “It’s like trying to grow American-flavor burley or flue-cured Virginia in Greece,” says Costas Gleoudis, chairman of N. Gleoudis Kavex in Thessaloniki, Greece. “Of course, you can grow them, but they will not have the same characteristics as the real classical oriental tobaccos.”
With village grading still ongoing in December, Sunel Tobacco Co. expected the classical oriental countries together to produce some 120.5 million kg of leaf in 2017 (see chart), compared with 106 million kg in 2016. Anticipating a crop of 68 million kg, Turkey was on track to produce more than projected, but the Balkan volumes fell slightly short of expectations, according to Frederick de Cramer, who recently retired as general manager of Sunel but continues to work as a consultant to the company.

 
The Turkish growing season was characterized by a wet spring, followed by a hot and dry summer. “Farmers continued to harvest until mid-October as the top stalks kept producing new leaves,” says de Cramer. In addition, the relatively high prices paid last year prompted Turkish farmers to grow more tobacco. “Combined, these factors led to a bumper crop in Turkey,” he says.
The classical oriental varieties cultivated in Turkey are Izmir, Samsun and Basma. De Cramer describes the quality of this year’s Turkish harvest as mediocre. While the heavy rains early in the season boosted yields, they also caused the tobacco to grow too fast. The low and middle stalks of the plants—representing about one-third of the crop—suffered as a result. The late planted crop, by contrast, features nice-bodied tobacco and mature styles, according to de Cramer.
Even with stable demand, de Cramer expects the Turkish crop to sell, due in part to shortfalls elsewhere. What’s more, currency fluctuations have made the country competitive on the global market. Compared with last year, the Turkish lira has lost 20 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar, even as the euro, which is used in Greece, has appreciated.

De Cramer is encouraged also by renewed interest from the Far East, especially from Indonesia. Confronted by an unprecedented decline in cigarette sales and domestic content requirements, Indonesian manufacturers had scaled back their purchases of tobacco in recent years, but now their stocks are running low and need replenishing.
Greece’s tobacco growing season was similar to that in Turkey, with heavy rains at the start giving way to heat and drought. The rains fell primarily in the Katerini growing regions, contributing to a slightly lower quality of that tobacco style compared with last year. Greece’s other classical oriental tobacco variety, Basma, was less affected by the rain and is of higher quality than last year, according to Kavex.
“The overall quality of the Greek oriental 2017 crop is lower than the 2016 crop,” says Kontos Alexandros, general manager of Seke. “The weather conditions were not in favor for enhanced quality.”
“The Katerini variety was heavily affected by the weather conditions, and the quality is definitely lower than the 2016 crop, with much higher inclusion of low-quality leaves—perished, mixed—especially in the low stalk positions,” he adds.
Contrary to Kavex, Seke rates the quality of this year’s Basma as slightly lower than last year’s, due to higher inclusion of low-quality leaves in the low stalk positions.
Gleoudis describes the quality of this year’s Bulgarian crop (Krumovgrad) as low and that of Macedonia (Prilep and Yaka) as good. As often, estimates of the crop sizes vary per player. For example, while Sunel anticipates 9.5 million kg of classical oriental in Bulgaria, Seke puts the figure at between 7 million and 7.5 million.
Retaining farmers
Like de Cramer, Gleoudis and Alexandros expect oriental to remain in demand. The end of EU tobacco growing subsidies in 2006 forced Greek tobacco farmers to focus on commercially viable varieties—i.e., Basma and Katerini. The less popular types have been discontinued so that production today is aligned with customer requirements.
A bigger challenge, says Gleoudis, will be to sustain production. In many origins, farmers are aging. In Greece and Turkey, the average tobacco farmer is more than 50 years old (growers in Macedonia and Bulgaria are said to be slightly younger). Oriental is a notoriously labor-intensive crop; when given the opportunity, young people opt for more comfortable jobs in the cities or even in other countries. After Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, many rural workers moved to member states with better employment prospects.
In Greece, the depopulation of the countryside has slowed in the wake of the country’s severe economic crisis. A lack of opportunities in the cities has convinced some tobacco growers to stay in their villages, but this situation is unlikely to last. When the economy recovers, the pace of urbanization will likely pick up again, notes Gleoudis. The 2017 Greek oriental crop was grown by 14,800 farmers, according to Seke, with 11,700 of them producing Basma and 3,100 growing Katerini.

Turkey’s growers face the problem of social insurance—or lack thereof. Young people prefer working a minimum-wage city job that carries insurance over toiling uninsured in the fields. Leaf dealer initiatives to offer some coverage have proved cost-prohibitive because doing so requires employing the farmers year-round, even though tobacco production is a seasonal activity. “What is the farmer going to do in winter?” asks de Cramer. “Unless our customers are willing to pay for it, it is hard to justify.”
To retain growers, the industry is trying to make the job of the farmer more profitable and a bit easier, primarily through mechanization. But oriental tobacco is not an easy crop to mechanize. It is often grown in hilly terrain, and the plant’s characteristically small leaves present a challenge for machines.  Nonetheless, progress has been made, according to Gleoudis. The greater challenge, he notes, will be to mechanize the curing process. “Here, we face some difficulties,” he says.
His sentiment is echoed by de Cramer. A relatively new technique known as “sock curing” or “sausage curing” brings down the farmers’ per-kilogram cost dramatically—but it also compromises quality, which in turn impacts the price. “Sausage curing works only for certain grades,” says de Cramer.
Despite the challenges, de Cramer, Alexandros and Gleoudis are sanguine about the outlook for oriental. Sunel and Kavex continue to invest, even as the industry consolidates. Alexandros expects future demand for classical oriental tobaccos to be “stable-plus.”

De Cramer also sees opportunities for oriental in the wake of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s push for lower-nicotine cigarettes. Unirrigated and unfertilized, oriental tobacco has comparatively low levels of nicotine already, and he says it would be relatively easy to reduce them further. “We are doing some trials already,” says de Cramer.
The vacuum left by Leaf Tobacco A. Michailides’ withdrawal from the Balkans is being filled by other leaf merchants. After heavy investments in Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania, Seke says it is now the region’s second-largest tobacco firm. The company has built a €6 million ($7.22 million) factory in Macedonia, which is scheduled to start operations in April. The new facility can store and process 3 million kg of classical oriental tobaccos. Earlier, Seke modernized its factory in Xanthi, Greece.
Missirian and Ozege have reportedly formed a joint venture, combining their forces in Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria.
Kavex recently spent €2 million to upgrade a production line and install the latest Tomra sorter for the detection and removal from tobacco of foreign matter. The investment, says Gleoudis, demonstrates Kavex’s commitment to classical oriental tobaccos. “It shows we believe in the future.”

At the helm of Forest for nearly two decades, Simon Clark continues to champion the right of adults to make their own decisions.

By George Gay

“The clue’s in the name,” said Simon Clark, the director of Forest, partway through an interview with Tobacco Reporter in October. Indeed it is, but it is a cryptic clue, as perhaps befits this studious-looking man. Forest here is an acronym for the U.K.-based Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco. So what Clark was alluding to, I think, was that his organization is primarily focused on the freedom of consumers to be able to make their own choices. Sure, freedom to smoke tobacco, but also freedom to indulge in any other activities that are legal and that don’t cause undue stress to others—with emphasis on the undue: No precious souls need apply for redress.

Forest was formed in 1979, and Clark—who had always been supportive of the organization, and who had known each of his three predecessors—became its director in 1999 for what, at the time, he imagined would be about three or four years. Clearly, it was a senior position, but you have to wonder what made him join at a time when tobacco was already a pariah industry. After all, he had left the University of Aberdeen in Scotland in 1980 with a degree in English and the ambition to become a journalist. And, indeed, he had worked as a journalist in a wide variety of roles for 15 years before joining Forest.

Well, the way he tells it, he didn’t consider being the director of Forest as a tobacco industry role; it was about consumers and their rights—though “rights” is a word he shies away from now. I would speculate, however, that there was slightly more to his career choice than that. Part of his journalistic activities were devoted to radical/reactionary—depending upon which side of the fence you are looking from—student publications; and he says that he came to Forest from the “fringes of libertarian politics.” He was, I would guess, something of a rebel without sufficient cause, and Forest provided a cause.

And I would speculate, too, that this has worked well for Forest. Clark might be studious-looking and—dare I say it?—avuncular, but he is also engagingly combative. He can smile while, if not being a villain, then certainly playing parts that require growing a moustache. He opposed the ban on smoking in cars when young people are present, and he supports people being allowed to smoke upon hospital grounds. These are not causes for the fainthearted, even though his arguments for taking the positions he does are hard to fault and display empathy for those not looked on sympathetically by everybody.

It is at instances like this that Clark engages what I would describe as his combative empathy. He seems to understand smokers even though he is not a smoker and never has been—something that is interesting in itself given that, from an early age he was exposed to tobacco advertising and, as a regular pub-goer when he was in his 20s, he experienced the sights and smells of cigarette packs and smoking, all of which we are told can draw nonsmokers into becoming smokers.

Second-class citizens

In fact, it was empathy that got him hooked on Forest, and it is probably one of the reasons that he has overstayed his three or four years. Shortly after joining the organization, he attended an international conference for about 12–14 smokers’ rights groups, as he remembers it. He turned up concerned that it was going to be a meeting of fairly hardcore libertarian activists, but the people he met, he said, were ordinary smokers from around Europe, mostly volunteers representing groups of people who simply enjoyed smoking and who came across as rather bemused by the anti-smoking movement and the increasing restrictions being foisted on smokers. All they had wanted was to be left alone to enjoy smoking. They didn’t want to upset anybody, they didn’t want to inconvenience other people, and they were happy with reasonable restrictions on where they could smoke. Clark said he felt very strongly that they needed a voice and that they should be supported.

Fast-forward, and things have become decidedly more hostile for smokers. Attempts have been made by their enemies to denormalize them, and they have been abandoned, or are being abandoned, by their erstwhile friends, with the exception of Forest and a few like-minded organizations. Although smokers were already under attack when Clark joined Forest, they were still allowed to smoke in most public places, and tobacco advertising was allowed. At that time, he said, there was far more of a sense that adults should be allowed to make their own decisions without excessive government interference. So the biggest change since then had been the buildup of a huge level of intolerance toward smoking. Smokers were now treated like second-class citizens in a way that they weren’t 15 years ago, and in no small part this could be laid at the feet of the smoking ban, which is still the issue that rankles most with U.K. smokers and Forest.

This sense of frustration is partly down to the fact that, contrary to popular belief, while the general public had supported smoking restrictions when they were proposed, only about 30 percent had supported a comprehensive ban, so the government essentially ignored public opinion—much of it garnered by Forest through an initially successful but ultimately doomed campaign—and imposed a ban that was unnecessary and unwarranted. Even today, independent Forest-funded surveys show that a majority of people in the U.K. would accept the establishment of separate smoking areas in pubs. And it is not even as if the ban has been successful in one of its key goals. Smoking rates fell only modestly after the ban came into force.

Being heard

Given all of the anti-tobacco legislation that has been passed in the U.K., it would be easy to see Forest as a failure, but this would be unfair. It must surely be the case that while things are bad for U.K. smokers, they could have been a whole lot worse without Forest having provided a consistent, rational voice for them—a voice that is not provided in many countries.

Clark, though, is modest about the achievements of his organization, even though it cannot be easy getting across the smoker’s view in the present climate. He insists, however, it is just a matter of running the office as a professional operation: making people available to answer questions from the media at any time and being on the ball with a press release when a story breaks. “We have a loud voice, and we try to use it—and we’re quite persistent,” he said. “Sometimes we will have a run-in with broadcasters about why they omitted a comment from Forest in a story, and we often get stories updated. We don’t let it go.”

In addition, Forest has an active and lively website, issues regular bulletins, and runs events aimed at maintaining its profile in political and media circles. For instance, it holds regular events at Westminster and attends political party conferences. And once a year it thumbs its nose at public smoking bans with Smoke on the Water, a smoke-friendly trip on the River Thames aboard The Elizabethan, otherwise known as Battleship Potemkin.

It also holds the annual Forest Freedom Dinner at which it embraces a wider community of businesses and people whose freedom to enjoy, say, eating and drinking certain things, is increasingly coming under attack. One of Clark’s disappointments, in fact, is that Forest has never been able to build long-term relationships with other industries that are at risk from excessive government interference. This is partly because those industries have not wanted to align themselves with the tobacco industry, partly because they have tended to stick their heads in the sand about the dangers they face from restrictive legislation and partly because Forest has been kept busy fighting the fires lit by organizations such as Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

Having said that, Forest did set up a campaign called The Free Society, through which it organized events on a range of issues not just having to do with smoking but also having to do with libertarian causes such as alcohol consumption, free speech and surveillance. The Free Society developed a loose network that worked well when it came to opposing the standardized tobacco packaging issue, where, it could be said, Forest won the argument but lost the battle to realpolitik.

No to the nanny state

Clark is careful not to rant about tobacco and tobacco legislation, but his language becomes fairly robust when on the subject of ASH. He said he thought that most people were pretty tolerant about smoking—as had been made clear by the results of a series of opinion polls on issues such as taxation and smoking bans that Forest had put together under the title Enough is Enough, and that might well have had some effect in moderating recent government policy toward tobacco. But, at the same time, there was a hard core of anti-smokers driven on by campaigns mostly funded by the public purse. Clearly aggrieved, he described as “ludicrous” the situation in the U.K. whereby public funds were given to groups such as ASH, and that money was used to lobby the government to introduce more restrictions to harass smokers.

A large part of Forest’s donations come from tobacco companies, but Clark insists that the organization’s voice is the voice of certain smokers, the voice of adults who smoke, who enjoy smoking and who don’t want to quit; it was not the voice of tobacco manufacturers. “I am passionate about maintaining Forest’s independence,” he said. And, he added, when it came to responding to requests for media comments: “We don’t have to go through a committee. We don’t have to wait for approval. We don’t have to wait for lawyers We don’t take instructions from the companies.”

Clark’s robust language is not reserved only for ASH, and he can sometimes surprise with those of whom he approves and those he doesn’t. He will tell you that at university he was one of a minority of students who were on the center-right politically, but one of the people he speaks most warmly about is the former Labour Party Health Secretary John Reid, who was not in favor of a total public smoking ban. And he described tobacco taxation—something that had soared during the past decade—as highly regressive because it had relatively little impact on those who were well-off but hurt the low-paid or elderly with modest pensions, people for whom smoking might be one of their few pleasures. Clark said it was immoral to use taxation for social engineering and to “punish” these people for consuming a legal product. “What we are seeing is an attack on ordinary working-class people,” he said.

He’s critical, also, of councils that complain about the litter caused by discarded cigarette butts but that won’t provide bins in which people can safely stub out their cigarettes on the grounds that to provide such bins would be to “re-normalize” smoking.

And he doesn’t like the U.K.’s current “nanny state,” which, he says, treats adults like children and children like idiots. Indicating his avuncular girth, he said that he would like to lose weight, but that he didn’t want the government forcing him to do so. Similarly, some smokers wanted to quit or cut down, but they didn’t want the government to force them to do so through punitive taxation or by banning smoking everywhere and making it physically impossible to smoke.

And this is where he sees smokers’ biggest challenge coming from in the future—finding a place to smoke legally. They were going to end up with very few places where they could smoke without being prosecuted, and, with tobacco being a legal product, that seemed to be an extraordinary situation.

It is perfectly possible within a civilized society to accommodate the majority who don’t smoke and the minority who do smoke, he said. Given that we could land a man on the moon, it is clearly possible, using modern, proven technology, to provide smoking and nonsmoking accommodations for people.

Manufacturers of belting solutions are successfully navigating the industry’s transition.

By Stefanie Rossel

The radical changes in the tobacco industry haven’t bypassed suppliers of tobacco materials handling solutions. As the golden days for combustible tobacco products are over and cigarette volumes decrease, manufacturers have stepped up their quest for ever-greater efficiency and process optimization.

At the same time, tobacco companies must cope with changing consumer preferences, which include increasingly customized traditional cigarettes as well as the rapid rise of an entirely new product category, next-generation products.

“There is a remarkable transition within the industry,” notes Jens Faerber, managing director of sales at Max Schlatterer, a German manufacturer of belts and tapes. While probably best known for its Esband endless garniture and suction tapes, the company also offers a wide range of endless transport and conveyor belts, as well as drive and special belts.

“Belting manufacturers are facing a challenging world full of regulations, restrictions and the constant demand for efficiency. The pace of development is getting faster and faster,” says Faerber. “Digitization is one main factor that drives our current understanding of smart tools, transparency, pace, flexibility and customer orientation into completely different dimensions.”

One of the main tasks for tobacco companies, he adds, is to cater to the changing smoking habits, which requires a vastly expanded product portfolio. “Like to our customers, we see the potential of new tobacco products, and we support their development projects with our expertise. Nevertheless, we still see our competencies also in belting and supplying the tobacco industry with belt and tape solutions for existing tobacco products such as cigarettes and filters. Constant improvement of processes and therefore efficiency are the keywords here.”

Wanted: multifunctionality

In traditional cigarette production, there is a vast range of applications for belts and tapes in the primary and the secondary department. Comprising highly specialized material compositions and featuring elaborate surface structures and coatings to optimize product movements within the cigarette manufacturing process, belts and tapes are high-tech products. Requirements for the regular consumable items, which, like other spare parts, have a limited lifespan, vary greatly depending on the point in processing where they are used. Having direct contact with tobacco and other cigarette components, belts and tapes must comply with strict unpacked food and pyrolysis guidelines.

This means that belts in the primary need a nonstick surface that doesn’t contaminate the tobacco. Forbo Siegling, a German manufacturer of conveyor belts, currently focuses on the development of belts with improved “release” properties, as well as dirt-resistant and dirt-repellent silo belts, according to Christian Reinhard, Forbo Siegling’s segment manager for food and tobacco. Resistance to high temperatures and steam is also essential. “We see a trend toward fine-cut tobaccos,” says Reinhard. “These often wet and sticky tobaccos require belts with better release properties.”

To cater to these requirements, the company in early 2016 launched a new type of conveyor belt. The Siegling Transilon E 8/2 0/A2 MT-TT white FDA is a fabric-based polyolefin belt with an additional top face made of polypropylene. This coating makes the belt resistant to hot water and steam—i.e., hydrolysis-resistant. According to its manufacturer, temperatures of up to 120 degrees Celsius and for short periods up to 140 C are unproblematic. Originally developed for manufacturing steam-cooked rice for a customer in China, the new belt also has good release characteristics for sticky foodstuffs, such as moist tobacco. The belt is also “troughable,” which is important for the conveyance of bulk goods and complies with U.S., EU and Japanese regulations for use in the food industry.

Extending service life

Schlatterer’s current emphasis is on tapes for filter components, such as nonwrapped acetate, in addition to solutions for the production of new tobacco products. Materials must meet both the high tobacco industry requirements and Schlatterer’s own quality standards. Service life is still the main consideration in terms of good belt performance, according to Faerber. “The service life of a belt is affected by various facets; the material, for example, is one factor,” he says. “Another point is the machine setup. This is why we stay in close contact with our customers, to find the right belting solution by looking at the tobacco machine in total. Efficiency is key, and therefore we focus on maintaining and expanding our high quality level. This means that the variety between two belts of the same product line is as low as possible. We already set narrow fields of tolerance.”

The company benefits from its diversification into other industries, which is typical of most players in the belting systems sector. “Since we are able to combine different carrier materials, coatings and refinements, it is possible to create a custom conveyor belt that suits the needs of our customers,” says Faerber. “The possible application areas vary from transportation to food processing, weighing, etc. So we have a profound knowledge and understanding of production processes in different fields. Through being so diversified, we are able to transfer new findings and technologies we developed for the food industry to the tobacco industry, for example.”

The company’s most recent innovation has gone the opposite direction. Looking outside the tobacco industry, based on many years of experience and knowledge, the company introduced a completely new product—pressure rollers. These consist of polymers or foam and can be applied to hold down transportation goods or attach labels.

Moving with the times

Such equipment might also become useful in the production and packaging of novel tobacco products. Heat-not-burn (HnB) products, for instance, have seen remarkable growth over the past few years. To meet demand, manufacturers have begun to expand production capacities and convert former cigarette factories into HnB production sites, which opens up additional opportunities for manufacturers of belting solutions. Schlatterer already operates in this field. “New tobacco products such as heat-not-burn products are produced in a different way but quite similar to the traditional cigarettes, and therefore there are special requirements on belts and tapes as well,” Faerber points out. “In the case of new tobacco products, our portfolio varies from slightly altered tapes and belts to complete innovations, depending on the processes.” Here, Schlatterer uses various materials, such as yarns and polymers.

E-cigarette production involves different manufacturing processes altogether. “Our belts may be involved in the process—mainly packaging—but the typical tobacco-specific requirements, such as pyrolysis requirements, do not apply here,” says Reinhard.

“At the moment, there is no special need for endless belts in the actual production process of e-cigarettes as far as we know, but Esband offers belting solutions regarding the packaging process and other transport processes,” Faerber says. “With our other product line for the packaging industry, for example, we already have sophisticated solutions that are ready to be used in these processes as well.”

For the time being, novel tobacco products are likely to remain a niche market, despite their impressive growth rates, and both companies see current opportunities predominantly in the traditional tobacco market. “Even though tobacco consumption may decrease in some parts of the world, it will undoubtedly stay a major industry,” says Reinhard. “We will continue to listen to our customers—original equipment manufacturers and end users alike—and be a powerful provider of belting solutions.”

“I definitely see the change within the tobacco industry and find it remarkable how innovative the industry is,” says Faerber. “The new products—but also other developments in production processes—show that the industry is able to adapt quickly to the needs of the customers and requirements of the market and legislation. Looking at Schlatterer, based on our comprehensive strategy, the future will be challenging—but we are well-prepared.”

Some strategies to phase out combustible cigarettes are more sensible than others.

By George Gay

It has been well said that if you hold to a constant political position while living in the same country, sooner or later you will be tried for treason. In a similar vein, if, two years or so ago, you were talking with serious intent about the tobacco endgame, you were considered by many people to be “one prawn short of a barbie.” But now, if you’re seriously examining a closely related issue, the traditional tobacco cigarette endgame, you’re seen as cooking on all burners.

On June 29, I attended an event hosted by Philip Morris (PM) Limited in London that was staged on the back of the question: Can Britain go smoke-free in the next 10 years? A couple of weeks later, I read a piece by Jackie Horne on http://asia.nikkei.com in which she said Philip Morris International could be looking to begin talks with governments—the Japanese and South Korean governments, I believe—within five years on phasing out traditional cigarettes. Then, at the end of July, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) came out with its “comprehensive plan for tobacco and nicotine regulation.” And at the beginning of August, New Zealand announced that it was going to legalize the sale there of previously banned smokeless tobacco products if manufacturers could demonstrate that they were significantly less risky than were traditional tobacco cigarettes.

As some readers will have noted, I was a little disingenuous in my introduction. You cannot sensibly make a direct comparison between most of the endgames envisaged two years ago and the more recent ones, for at least one major reason. Those of two years ago were based on the idea that, in one way or another, tobacco products should be made unavailable to those not already using them—and that was basically it. Under such schemes, those born after a certain year—say, 2000 in a country with a legal tobacco buying age of 18—would not be allowed to buy tobacco products. Such schemes, therefore, would allow those who were already smokers to continue to smoke if they so wished but would make it difficult and unwise for young persons to start smoking.

Although such schemes had merit, many people decided, without any evidence as far as I could see, that they couldn’t be made to work. I was reluctant to treat them so dismissively, but they certainly had two major and related problems. Firstly, they seemed to assume that anybody too young to buy cigarettes legally would not, when they reached 18, 21 or whatever, want to use some mild relaxant or stimulant that was legally available over the counter and that, unlike alcohol for instance, didn’t make them lose their mental faculties. And secondly, they seemed to throw onto the “too hard” pile already-smokers. In other words, they offered no alternative products to traditional tobacco cigarettes. They didn’t always rule them out specifically, but such alternatives were not part of the offer.

Some of the new endgames, on the other hand, seek to “encourage” smokers to shift to other products that are less risky, while others are based on authorities not actively discouraging these alternative products. And each of these strategies is backed by policies that seek to make the consumption of traditional tobacco cigarettes less appealing, though just how less appealing differs from market to market.

Defining success

Does this mean, therefore, that the new endgames are good and the old ones bad? I don’t think so. It seems to me that the new schemes are far better simply because they do offer alternatives to smoking, but, in my estimation, some of the old schemes had positive aspects, while some of the ideas that one can infer from what is known of the new schemes seem positively potty.

Overall, I think that the way to judge the value of these old or new schemes is to look—once they have been evaluated as having a reasonable chance of success—at how long they would take to come to fruition. And I fail to see why others would do otherwise, given that, we are told by the World Health Organization, each year 6 million to 7 million people die from tobacco-related diseases.

One of the interesting points made by PM on June 29 was that while smoking rates were declining in the U.K., it could take 30–50 years or longer before everybody had quit—before there were no smokers left. The question that had to be asked was how the number could be reduced to zero as quickly as possible.

Now I don’t want readers to get all dewy-eyed about this because, clearly, PM, as well as selling the idea of reduced harm, was selling its iQOS heated-tobacco device—something that it made no bones about. But then why not? In the U.K., 1.5 million smokers have switched to e-cigarettes because of the intervention of this new idea and this new technology. And iQOS is a newer technology that has gone through a few iterations to emerge at the point where it apparently offers an experience closer to smoking than that offered by e-cigarettes.

Although the experience with e-cigarettes in the U.K. has been impressive, it has not been overwhelming. According to PM, while about 90 percent of U.K. smokers have tried vaping these products, only 15 percent have switched to them. Contrast that with iQOS in Japan, where 80 percent of people who have tried the product have been able to stop smoking.

Now you can argue that Japan is a special case. For one thing, its consumers are generally receptive to new products. And for another, Japan’s laws have deprived smokers of nicotine-delivering e-cigarettes; so heat-not-burn devices have not had to compete with these products. But it nevertheless seems to me that whichever way you cut them, PM’s sales in Japan have been impressive. And when I say impressive, I’m not talking only about the commercialization of iQOS, which apparently has taken 10 percent of the cigarette market in three years; I am talking about the potential harm reduction that this commercialization has engendered. In Japan, something like 130,000 people die each year of smoking-related diseases.

Still, is 10 years long enough to completely reorientate the U.K. market? It’s impossible to say, of course. At this stage, nobody knows whether somebody will find a flaw in the reduced-harm credentials of heat-not-burn devices, or whether somebody might come up with an even more efficacious product. Certainly, the optimists among the invitees at PM’s London event would have been cheered when they were reminded how far the iPhone had come since being launched 10 years ago. On the other hand, the pessimists might have been recalling that it was also the 10th anniversary of the start of the global financial crisis, and you could argue that, since then, almost nothing has happened with respect to developing a financial system that is more robust than the one that fell apart 10 years ago.

And perhaps there is a lesson here. Perhaps huge, global problems such as the financial crisis or 6 million to 7 million deaths a year are just too big to be fixed by the good and the great sitting around thinking about them. Perhaps they can be fixed only by the unexpected—new technologies such as those that have delivered e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn devices—or by things that have been staring us in the face for years without most of us having recognized them fully, such as snus.

No sense of urgency

This is why I’m less than excited about the FDA’s recent conversion to the continuum of risk and harm reduction. Yes, it was good to see it draw back from the brink of sending years of vaping progress over the cliff edge, but, still, this is not an organization that is going to have a positive feel for timing or the unexpected. It will bang on at every opportunity about how each year 480,000 U.S. citizens die prematurely from smoking-related diseases, but this knowledge seems to engender in it nothing like the sense of urgency that you will find at PM and, indeed, British American Tobacco.

Look at the FDA’s record. As far as I can work out, in January 2011, Swedish Match North America (SMNA) started the formal process of submitting an FDA modified-risk tobacco product (MRTP) application, and, on Aug. 27, 2014, it became the first company to complete such an application. The application—which basically sought only to change, in respect of one brand of snus, what one expert observer described as “egregiously inaccurate” health warnings—involved the submission of something like 1,000 pages of evidence with about 120,000 pages of supporting documents. On July 31, 2015, at the request of the FDA, SMNA supplied additional information. At the very end of 2016, SMNA’s application was eventually denied, or a decision was deferred, which, in practice, amounted to the same thing. U.S. smokers were to continue to be misled by egregiously inaccurate health warnings about what is probably the lowest-risk tobacco or nicotine product available—a product with a proven record of converting smokers.

If you take the view that the SMNA application took six years, then using the FDA’s own figures, during that time 2,880,000 U.S. citizens died as a result of tobacco use. And if you take only the 2 1/2 years from when the application was lodged to when the decision was deferred, the death toll was 1,200,000. Of course, these people wouldn’t have been “saved” by a different decision, but very many would have been as the years rolled by and more smokers, encouraged by new, more accurate health warnings, switched from smoking to snus use.

Perhaps it isn’t helpful or healthy to rake over the past in this way, but for me it is a useful reminder of what might happen when the FDA talks about its latest plan being a multiyear road map, with, unspoken, each year seeing the death of another 480,000 tobacco users. As I understand it, the iQOS application currently before the FDA involves about 2.5 million pages of documents. If it took the FDA 2 1/2 years to get through 120,000 pages of documents, it’s going to take … oh, you do the math. But bear in mind that our solar system is due to burn out in 5 billion years’ time.

Nicotine and addiction

I have a problem also with the FDA’s thoughts on nicotine and addiction. As I understand it, the idea is that the nicotine deliveries of traditional tobacco cigarettes should be reduced gradually to nonaddictive levels in order to encourage smokers to quit or to shift to lower-risk vapor products that provide higher levels of nicotine—providing such a reduction proves practical. In fairness, I should say that it is encouraging—from a rational point of view, if not from a timing point of view—that the FDA intends to consult on possible unintended consequences that would result in lowering nicotine levels in traditional tobacco cigarettes.

And I wouldn’t be too concerned about the potential unintended consequence that everybody seems to be picking up on (and that therefore surely cannot be a “potential unintended consequence”)—the one that says the sale on the duty-paid market of only lower-nicotine delivery cigarettes might cause smokers to switch to illicit cigarettes. Governments and tobacco manufacturers are old enough and big enough to look after themselves if they start to lose revenue and income because of such a switch.

One worry that I do have concerns who is going to pick up the tab for lowering nicotine in this way, assuming there is a cost associated with licensing the technology for producing the leaf tobacco needed? Smokers cannot afford it. In the U.S., state and local cigarette tax increases have been shown to be pushing them toward the federal food stamp program.

But the worst consequence—it certainly wouldn’t be unintended because everybody associated with tobacco is aware of it—would arise if lowering nicotine caused smokers to suck harder on their cigarettes to get the nicotine they seek. Such a development would have the potential to increase smokers’ health risks in at least two ways. It would change the way they smoke, something that could alter the type of risk they face and the magnitude of that risk. Additionally, sucking harder would mean that they would draw into their lungs more of the tar that just about everybody wants to reduce and has been working to reduce through the promotion of vapor products.

The same sorts of effects could be seen if smokers smoked a greater number of lower-nicotine cigarettes because they needed to keep up their nicotine intake or because they decided that lower-nicotine cigarettes were associated with lower risk—not an unreasonable assumption given the misinformation that has been peddled to them over the years.

OK, you might say that the FDA has covered this by saying it intends to investigate nicotine and addiction, but for how many years at 480,000 deaths a year? Why not increase nicotine delivery levels so that smokers ingest lower levels of tar and encourage smokers to switch to lower-risk products by allowing manufacturers of these products to tell the public the truth about them? We need to cut a few corners; we don’t want to take the long way home.

There is another, lesser problem on the horizon, too. Some people have been suggesting for a while that nicotine on its own—say, as it’s delivered by e-cigarettes—isn’t addictive. Addiction occurs only when nicotine is delivered in association with some other element of tobacco, they say. If this is the case, could it be that that element is delivered by heat-not-burn devices as well as by traditional tobacco cigarettes, and, if so, do we have to open a branch line off the continuum of risk to account for the fact that consumers of heat-not-burn products might keep using these products for longer than consumers of e-cigarettes keep using theirs?

Ask the smoker

But one of the biggest bugbears of all forms of endgames comes down to whether anybody knows or cares what smokers want. I have written about this often before, but it bears repeating. Has anybody ventured into the “sink estates” and asked financially impoverished smokers whether they want the new products on offer or whether they are happy with traditional products? Well-heeled representatives of companies, agencies and governments might assume that everybody wants to add an extra 10 years or so to their lives, but have they really thought about the 55-year-old widow living in a flat with a metal security door to keep the vandals from putting burning paper through her letter box? Has anybody asked the homeless? Perhaps these people do want to live an extra 10 years, but I would want to hear that from their own lips.

If the well-heeled in our societies want to improve the lot of smokers, I suggest that in the first instance they stop trying to prevent them from smoking, especially by “denormalizing” them and by raising tobacco taxes because, in the U.K. at least, people in the financially poorest section of society die nine years younger than do those in the richer sections. But, at the same time, for goodness’ sake stop telling them that quitting is hard. Would you tell a child learning to swim that swimming was hard?

In the second instance, the well-heeled should stop sucking the value out of our societies and allow some of the wealth that is created to lift people out of their poverty and out of the sink estates. Or if they cannot bring themselves to do that, perhaps they could find it in their hearts to unban smoking in bingo halls and pubs that want to allow smoking so that our 55-year-old widow can get out again and perhaps have a reason to start thinking about longevity.

Getting on with the job

I have another small worry, too. The idea that companies will start talking to governments about phasing out a legal product is worrying from the point of view of democracy. Our democracies, where they exist, are already being chipped away by, for instance, the signing of international trade deals that include investor-state dispute settlement provisions. If cigarette manufacturers are going to talk to governments about phasing out cigarettes, those discussions should be transparent, and every word of them made public—and they should include smoker representatives, some of whom should not be dressed in sharp suits. Smokers should not be treated as if they are passive bystanders. They’re not children.

But let me end on a positive note. Commercial and competitive issues aside, PM is surely doing a tremendous job in trying to turn the supertanker of tobacco-related disease that has been, despite numerous efforts, sailing into deeper and deeper waters. British American Tobacco, too, has been working phenomenally hard for a long time to produce lower-risk products that are acceptable to smokers, and Japan Tobacco, as I understand it, is following along. All these companies need is to be allowed to get on with the job that they are doing without governments banning their lower-risk products through ignorance or on ideological grounds, and preferably with governments allowing them to explain to the public exactly what they are doing.

This is not to say that some governments are not being helpful. In my opinion, the U.K. government has generally been very progressive in its approach to the use of vapor products for harm reduction. But the New Zealand government is also worthy of mention. In my opinion, it was once reactionary in regard to questions of lower-risk products and harm reduction, but it seems to be becoming more flexible in its approach. While I was writing this piece, a story by Rachel Thomas on http://stuff.co.nz described how the sale of smokeless tobacco products was to be legalized in New Zealand with a view to providing smokers with less risky alternatives to cigarettes.

Associate Health Minister Nicky Wagner was quoted as saying that some smokeless products available internationally, including heat-not-burn, snus, moist snuff, dissolvables and inhaled-nicotine devices, might be significantly safer than are cigarettes. Current laws ban the import, sale and distribution of tobacco products described as suitable for chewing or any other oral use besides smoking, but in her announcement Wagner said the government intended to establish a premarket approval system for smokeless tobacco and nicotine-delivery products, other than e-cigarettes. “This is part of new thinking—a forward-looking approach, building on some of the innovative new technologies that are available intentionally to try and give smokers safer alternatives to tobacco,” she said.

Coming out of New Zealand, that announcement is so encouraging.