Category: Featured

Kiwi Health Director Urged to Permit Flavors

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The attitude and actions of the next director-general of health will be key to New Zealand achieving its smokefree ambitions, says the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA).
“This person could make or break Smokefree 2025. He or she advises the government, oversees regulation, and has the final say on new vape store licences. It’s an incredibly important position when it comes to New Zealand effectively addressing tobacco,” says Nancy Loucas, executive coordinator of the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Advocates (CAPHRA).
Current Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield will leave the job in July, with his successor yet to be appointed.
Loucas says that while New Zealand’s Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Act 2020 is viewed internationally as relatively progressive, there are some provisions that the next director-general should review.
“The act claims to strike a balance between ensuring vaping products are available to adult smokers while protecting young people. Sanctioning it as an R18 product has helped achieve that. However, banning the most popular flavours from general retail is only stopping adult smokers from quitting deadly tobacco,” she says.
Since August 11, 2021, general retailers such as supermarkets, service stations and convenience stores have been limited to just selling three flavors–mint, menthol and tobacco. Only licenced specialist vape stores can sell a full range of more popular flavours.
“The next Director-General of Health must review this restriction on general retail. By the time he or she takes office, the flavor ban would have run a year and many of us strongly believe it’s hindering not helping New Zealand achieve Smokefree 2025.
“Adult smokers desperate to quit can go to a supermarket and choose any brand of cigarette under the sun, yet they can only choose from three vape flavors. That’s not enabling them to make the best decision for their health nor is it helping New Zealand reduce its smoking rate,” says Loucas.

This person could make or break Smokefree 2025. He or she advises the government, oversees regulation, and has the final say on new vape store licences. It’s an incredibly important position when it comes to New Zealand effectively addressing tobacco.
Nancy Loucas, executive coordiinator, CAPHRA
With youth smoking at a historic low and 9.4 percent of adults now daily smoking, New Zealand’s goal of Smokefree 2025—where 5 percent or less of the general population smoke—is looking increasingly likely to be achieved.
CAPHRA says overall Bloomfield has been a supporter of New Zealand’s Tobacco Harm Reduction public health strategy. This has included approving and promoting messages on the ministry of health’s Vaping Facts website, which headlines “vaping is less harmful than smoking”—an approach that has been heavily supported across New Zealand’s health sector.
Late last year Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall released the government’s Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan.
At the time, CAPHRA and other THR advocates raised concerns that vaping—a 95 percent less harmful alternative and New Zealand’s most effective smoking cessation tool—is largely absent from the government’s reinvigorated approach to stamping out smoking.
“The smokefree action plan makes tobacco less available and less appealing. It fails, however, to fully acknowledge the positive role vaping has played, and will play, in getting Kiwis off the cancer sticks. That’s a worry because we won’t get there without safer nicotine products,” she says.
CAPHRA says top of mind for the next director-general of health is that fact that over 5,000 Kiwis continue to die from smoking-related illnesses every year, and the job to reduce that is by no means done.
“The next director-general of health will need to keep a close eye on whether the government’s vaping regulations and Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan are in fact delivering on their promise. With so many lives at stake, he or she will have no time to waste,” says Nancy Loucas.
April 25, 2022
Researchers Invited to Access PATH Data

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is encouraging researchers to access recently published numbers on tobacco consumption.
In March, the agency’s Center for Tobacco Products, together with the National Institutes of Health, released the first set of widely available Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study tables and figures that provide information on tobacco use among youth (aged 12-17), young adults (aged 18-24), and adults (aged 25+).
The content, which is available for public use, may be downloaded from the PATH Study webpage, which also provides information about the analytic methods used to generate the tables and figures.
The PATH Study is a uniquely large, long-term study of tobacco use and health in the United States. By following study participants over time, the PATH Study helps scientists learn how and why people start using tobacco, quit using it, and start using it again after they’ve quit, as well as how different tobacco products affect health over time.
April 25, 2022
Rolling Paper Market to Exceed $1 Billion

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The value of the global rolling papers market will be $679 million in 2022, according to a new report by Future Market Insights. Sales are projected to increase at a 5.1 percent compound annual growth rate, with the market size reaching $1.1 billion by 2032.
Traditionally, tobacco was smoked using paper scraps and leaves of different trees. However, paper scraps and leaves have gradually evolved into sophisticated and commercial rolling papers. Increasingly, cigarette paper and rolling papers are made from non-wood plant fibers such flax, hemp, sisal, rice straw and esparto.
Rolling papers are available in several forms, which include transparent, colored and flavored varieties. These papers offer desired tearing strength, thickness, air permeability and burning speed control. Rising number of commercial cigarette brands and surging popularity of roll-your-own smoking are expected to bolster sales in the market in the forthcoming years.
By material type, hemp segment is estimated to account for around 60 percent of the total market share in 2022. In terms of basis weight, demand in the 10 gsm to 25 gsm segment will increase at a 4.6 percent CAGR through 2032, according to the report.
Sales in the U.S. rolling papers market will grow at a 3.7 percent CAGR, reaching a valuation of $164.8 million by 2032. China will account for a lion’s share in the east Asian rolling papers market, with total sales reaching $136 million by 2032.
April 22, 2022
Taipei: Rally Against Proposed Vaping Ban

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Smoker rights groups on April 21 protested outside the legislature in Taipei against a proposal to ban e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products (HTPs), reports The Taipei Times.
The government must respect the rights of smokers, they said, adding that it should offer people choices, instead of instituting a ban.
The protest was in response to the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee considering changes to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act that would ban e-cigarettes and limit HTPs. Amendments to the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act to restrict e-cigarettes are also be considered by the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee.
One protester said that vaping devices, HTPs and flavored cigarettes should be regulated like regular cigarettes, with taxes and age restrictions for purchase.
“HTPs and e-cigarettes should be classified as tobacco products, just like the cigarettes sold at convenience stores,” the protester was quoted as saying by The Taipei Times. “We agree that the government should impose restrictions and rules, not permit sale to minors, no advertising, no online purchase and have health warnings.”
April 22, 2022
Study: Menthol Ban Could Increase Lung Cancer Rates

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Banning the sales of menthol cigarettes will likely have unintended consequences, according to a study by researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center published April 21 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute .
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration plans to issue proposed rules this spring that would prohibit menthol cigarettes. The measure is intended in part to address a health disparity since a significantly larger percentage of African Americans than whites smoke menthol cigarettes and African American men have higher lung cancer incidence and death rates from the disease.
According to the FDA, nearly 85 percent of all non-Hispanic Black smokers smoke menthol cigarettes, compared to 30 percent of non-Hispanic white smokers. The agency also believes that menthol-flavored cigarettes can be more addictive than non-menthol cigarettes and harder to quit.
However, the study by the Vanderbilt researchers revealed similar quit rates among menthol and non-menthol smokers overall and no statistically significant difference between white and African American participants.
The researchers tracked 16,425 smokers who entered the study between 2002 and 2009 and completed a follow-up survey between 2008-2012, 2012-2015 and 2015-2017. The average annual quit rate from those surveys was 4.3 percent for menthol smokers and 4.5 percent for non-menthol smokers.
Prior research by this Vanderbilt research group has shown that non-menthol smokers are at higher risk for lung cancer. They also cited research from Canada, where menthol-flavored cigarettes are banned, which revealed that most menthol smokers tend to switch to non-menthol brands rather than quit.
“If the existing epidemiologic data showing lower risk of lung cancer among menthol than non-menthol smokers hold generally, then in the long-term if high percentages of menthol smokers switch to non-menthols, the ban could have the unintended consequence of a net increase rather than decrease in risk, at least for lung cancer,” the researchers noted in the study.
April 22, 2022
Critics: San Francisco Flavor Ban Study Flawed

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New research refutes a May 2021 study suggesting San Francisco’s ban on all flavored tobacco products was tied to higher smoking rates in high school students compared to school districts without flavor policies in place, according to the Truth Initiative, an antitobacco organization.
Led by Harvard University’s School of Public Health’s Jessica Liu, the most recent research found that the data for the May 2021 study was collected too early to draw meaningful conclusions.
The San Francisco ban on flavored tobacco went into effect in July 2018. Enforcement, however, did not start until January 2019, according to the authors of the Harvard study.
The May 2021 study used data from the 2011-2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) to determine smoking rates in youth after San Francisco’s flavor ban went into effect. However, the 2019 YRBSS data in San Francisco were collected between September and December 2018, before the flavor law was enforced.
Given that compliance with flavored tobacco laws was relatively low in fall 2018 (17 percent in December 2018) and that few retailers were enforcing the restriction, data collected at this time are “an inappropriate data source for evaluating the effects of the city’s flavored tobacco sales restriction,” the authors write. “…the impact on actual access to flavored products did not really start to materialize until well after the YRBSS completed data collection in San Francisco.”
Liu’s team also looked at Oakland, whose survey data on tobacco use in youth were collected after that city started enforcing a flavored tobacco ban in January 2019. Researchers observed that high school youth vaping and cigarette use declined between 2017 and 2019 in Oakland.
April 22, 2022
Imperial to Transfer its Russian Business

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Imperial Brands today announced the transfer of its Russian business to investors based in Russia, subject to finalization of the registration of the transaction with local authorities, which is expected to take place shortly.
The transaction aligns with the company’s desire to divest its entire Russian operation as a going concern in order to provide the best outcome for its 1,000 Russian employees.
Imperial Brands’ Russian operations include a sales and marketing business, and a factory in Volgograd.
“We continue to support our Ukrainian colleagues and their families, including with transport and accommodation to enable them to escape the areas most heavily affected by war, and resettlement assistance for those who have left Ukraine,” the company wrote in an update.
Imperial Brands said its previous guidance on the financial impact of its exit from Russia and suspension of our Ukraine operations remains unchanged.
In fiscal year 2021, Russia and Ukraine represented in total around 2 percent of Imperial Brands’ net revenues and 0.5 percent of adjusted operating profit. The company anticipates a non-cash write off of around £225 million ($293.78 million) for this transaction, which it expects to be treated as an adjusting item.
April 21, 2022
PMI: Strong Quarter Despite Uncertainty

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Philip Morris International reported net revenues of $7.75 billion for the first quarter of 2022, up 2.1 percent over that reported for the 2021 first quarter. Its operating income was $3.3 billion, compared with $3.44 billion in the previous year’s quarter. PMI reported adjusted operating income of $3.34 billion, down 4.4 percent from the comparable 2021 period.
The company’s operations during the quarter were heavily impacted by the war between Russia and Ukraine, two important markets for PMI.
On Feb. 25, PMI announced the temporary suspension of its operations in Ukraine, including at its Kharkiv factory. While activities in the east of Ukraine remain the most heavily impacted, the company said it has seen some resumption of retail activities where safety allows.
In 2021, Ukraine accounted for around 2 percent of PMI’s total cigarette and heated tobacco unit shipment volume and under 2 percent of PMI’s total net revenues. As of March 31, 2022, PMI’s Ukrainian operations have approximately $400 million in total assets.
In March, PMI announced it would significantly scale down its operations in Russia, discontinuing a number of cigarette products, including Marlboro and Parliament, and reducing its manufacturing activities accordingly. According to PMI, the discontinued products represent approximately one-quarter of the company’s domestic cigarette SKUs.
PMI also canceled all product launches planned for 2022 in Russia, including the launch of its flagship heated tobacco product IQOS Iluma, which was originally planned to take place in March 2022. In addition, PMI canceled plans to manufacture its Terea heated tobacco units for IQOS Iluma in Russia and the related ongoing investment of $150 million.
PMI is currently working on a plan to exit Russia in an orderly manner. In 2021, Russia made up almost 10 percent of total shipment volumes and around 6 percent of PMI net revenues. As of March 31, 2022, PMI’s Russian operations have approximately $1.4 billion in total assets.
“The recent months have been an extremely challenging time for many in the PMI family given the war in Ukraine,” said PMI CEO Jacek Olczak in a statement. “Our primary concern is for our people and their families, and we are doing everything in our power to help them.”
“Despite this tragic situation, we were able to deliver a very strong performance in the first quarter—reflecting the hard work and dedication of our employees globally—with organic net revenue and currency-neutral adjusted diluted EPS growth coming ahead of our expectations.
“The re-acceleration of our IQOS business continued in the quarter, highlighted by a sequential increase of over 1 million total IQOS users, excluding Russia and Ukraine, and the superb performance of Iluma in initial launch markets. This was complemented by the robust performance of our combustible business, which exceeded our objective of stable category share in the quarter and delivered positive shipment volume and organic net revenue growth.
“We expect to deliver robust top- and bottom-line growth this year on a pro forma adjusted basis, including full-year adjusted diluted EPS growth of 9 percent to 11 percent, excluding currency. This gives us confidence in achieving our 2021 to 2023 compound annual growth targets, on a pro forma basis, and our ambition to become a majority smoke-free company by 2025.”
April 21, 2022
Zeller: CTP Tenure ‘Incredibly Rewarding’

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Mitch Zeller, the outgoing director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), described his tenure at the center as “incredible rewarding.” “I’ve had the opportunity to work with the best, hardest working people in the world and we’ve gotten a lot done, so my time here has been a joy,” he said in an interview published on the FDA website ahead of his retirement from public service in April.
Zeller joined the CTP as director in March 2013. During his tenure, the center grew from 426 people to more than 1,110. The CTP, said Zeller, also published multiple foundational rules and took action on just over 99 percent of marketing applications for 6.7 million products.
Asked about the remaining challenges for the CTP, Zeller cited the importance of taking action on the remaining marketing applications, but noted that the center and the agency are “more than up to the task.” He also stressed the importance of evidence-based policies.
“We must be faithful to our responsibility that whatever decision we make on any of them is firmly grounded in the science, whether we’re issuing a marketing authorization or a marketing denial order,” said Zeller.
Asked what advice he would give to the next CTP director, Zeller said he would encourage him or her to ask questions. “You’ll be working with extraordinarily talented people in the Commissioner’s Office and throughout the agency as well as the Department of Health and Human Services,” he said. “A lot of new insights and good thinking can come from people hearing a question that hadn’t occurred to them.
On the future of tobacco regulation, the outgoing CTP director said the opportunity over the next three to five years is for the center to continue the process of building the institution. “CTP remains the “baby” center in terms of how long it’s been around compared to the other FDA centers,” he said.
“In light of that, one of the things that I think I can safely predict is that more and more of those critically important foundational regulations will be proposed and finalized. With each one that comes, CTP will become that much more mature and stood up as a center like its sister centers that have been around for many, many decades.”
April 20, 2022
Derek Yach on TR’s Special Innovation Issue
The renowned global health expert explains how innovation represents the single biggest opportunity to lower the health toll of tobacco use.
By Taco Tuinstra
Until recently, few people would have mentioned the words “tobacco” and “innovation” in the same sentence. Even as other legacy industries started disrupting their respective operations, the tobacco industry remained content to milk its tried-and-tested business model and count on the habit-forming properties of nicotine to sustain its business.
That has changed dramatically over the past 15 years. Advances in technology, together with shifting attitudes, have turned the once-staid nicotine business into a cutting-edge innovator. The modern e-cigarette was not invented by the tobacco industry, but when it started making inroads around 2008, the industry recognized its potential and devoted considerable resources to its perfection. The ensuing disruption to the nicotine business prompted one major financial institution to rank the impact of e-cigarettes in the same league as that of 3D printing.
And it didn’t stop there. Tobacco companies went on to develop a host of additional reduced-risk technologies, such as tobacco-heating devices. Some even began applying their expertise in agronomy, product development and substance delivery to create nonrecreational products, such as vaccines, pharmaceuticals and therapeutic devices.
The topic of innovation has always been dear to Tobacco Reporter’s heart. Not only have we covered it frequently in our columns; we have also created a competition dedicated to industry innovation—the Golden Leaf Awards.
Astonished by the radical transition taking place in the industry, and excited about what it promises for the future, Tobacco Reporter decided to devote an entire issue to the topic of innovation.
To ensure the topic would be treated with the breadth and depth it deserves, we partnered with one of the world’s most prominent advocates for public health progress through innovation: Derek Yach. Formerly with the World Health Organization and the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, Derek was deeply involved in the creation of the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control—a document that was prepared when King Combustible still ruled supreme.
Since leaving the WHO, Derek has spent much of his time encouraging health authorities to recognize the unique public health opportunity presented by innovation, urging them to accommodate, rather than frustrate, new technologies.
Tobacco Reporter spoke with Derek about Tobacco Reporter’s special issue and the importance of innovation.
Taco Tuinstra is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial director.Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, he coordinates the work of staff writers and contributors.On his watch, Tobacco Reporter has won several awards for editorial excellence.Since joining the magazine in 1997, Taco has visited more than 75 countries to meet industry representatives in their markets and to report tobacco news firsthand.

April 19, 2022