Category: Markets

  • Botswana Tops Regional Smoking League

    Botswana Tops Regional Smoking League

    Photo: Michael Siebert from Pixabay

    Botswana has among the highest adult tobacco use rates in sub-Saharan Africa, a recent report shows.
     
    About 240,000 of the country’s adults aged 15 years or older used tobacco, representing a tobacco use rate of 17.6 percent, according to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS). This tobacco use rate is the highest of any country in the region that has carried out a GATS survey. The report shows 82.2 percent of adults purchased single cigarettes, which are more affordable than packs for consumers with low incomes.
     
    According to the GATS report, 12.2 percent of adults who worked indoors were exposed to tobacco smoke in enclosed areas at their workplace, and nearly two in three adults were exposed to secondhand smoke in bars or nightclubs.
     
    Anti-tobacco groups urged the government of Botswana to reject tobacco industry interference in health policy and to pass legislation to exclude tobacco companies and their allies from the policy process.
     
    “Tobacco companies like British American Tobacco Botswana actively lobby to weaken life-saving tobacco control laws because they know such policies have been widely proven to work,” said Bintou Camara, director of Africa programs at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “The company also promotes its deadly business in Botswana through partnerships with retailers and other businesses under the guise of empowering small and medium enterprises.”

  • Taat’s Hemp Cigarette Arrives in Ohio

    Taat’s Hemp Cigarette Arrives in Ohio

    Photo: Taat Lifestyle & Wellness

    Taat Lifestyle & Wellness has started distributing Taat, its tobacco and nicotine-free hemp cigarette, in the United States, the company announced in a statement. On Dec. 11, 2020, a first shipment of Taat arrived at the Canton, Ohio, warehouse of ADCO Distributors.

    Taat Chief Revenue Officer Tim Corkum said he was impressed with the rapid rollout of Taat.

    “It was exactly four months ago that I joined the company to lead commercialization efforts for Taat in the United States, and I consider it an incredible accomplishment for us to have taken the product from its first iteration to being retail-ready and in a distributor’s warehouse in that short of a period without any of the advantages that an established tobacco industry firm would have,” he said.

     “We are thrilled to be receiving the first distribution-scale batch of TAAT right on schedule, so that we can begin filling pre-orders from our tobacco retailer accounts across the state of Ohio,” said Pat Bell, chief operating officer of ADCO commented.

    “Additionally, we have received numerous requests from retailers who wish to place an order for TAAT upon the arrival of the first shipment to our warehouse, which we anticipate could lead to even more orders of TAAT. For a product that is not yet sold at retail, I am very impressed with the amount of interest that TAAT has managed to garner over the past few months.”

    In October 2020, the Taat Lifestyle & Wellness announced that it would be debuting Taat in Ohio. Initial launch activities included the rollout of a large-scale digital marketing campaign targeting legal-aged smokers in Ohio and sales efforts coordinated by a key accounts manager with more than a decade of sales experience with one of the world’s largest tobacco companies.

  • The Next Chapter

    The Next Chapter

    Photo: David Mark from Pixabay

    What might the new U.S. administration have in store for the vapor industry?

    By Patricia Kovacevic

    At the time of writing, the results of the U.S. elections are still contested by the presidential incumbent, a Republican, via various vote recount requests and litigation; however, it is a virtual certainty that the U.S. will have a new president, representing the Democratic Party, as of Jan. 20, 2021.

    The heads of departments, including the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), are appointed by the president, subject to confirmation by the Senate, and typically change with the administration. In turn, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is the agency within the HHS with primary jurisdiction over tobacco products (including electronic nicotine-delivery systems, or ENDS) as well as drugs, foods and other products, will be led in the new administration by a new commissioner.

    Given the Covid-19 crisis, the new president will be under immense pressure to appoint a new FDA commissioner immediately. Interestingly and somewhat surprisingly, a former FDA commissioner, David Kessler, was recently named co-chair of the new administration’s Covid-19 task force, although Kessler resigned his commissioner role in November 1996 amid controversy for overbilling his travel expenses during his tenure.

    Also during Kessler’s tenure, the FDA attempted to regulate tobacco products as “delivery devices for the drug nicotine” to bring tobacco products under FDA jurisdiction. Tobacco companies challenged the rules all the way to the Supreme Court and won (FDA v. Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corp.). The Supreme Court ruled that “Congress has clearly precluded the FDA from asserting jurisdiction to regulate tobacco products. Such authority is inconsistent with the intent that Congress has expressed in the FDCA’s [Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act] overall regulatory scheme and in the tobacco-specific legislation that it has enacted subsequent to the FDCA. In light of this clear intent, the FDA’s assertion of jurisdiction is impermissible.”

    Kessler’s wish to see tobacco regulated by the FDA was eventually granted by Congress in June 2009 through the bipartisan passage of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. While some speculate that Kessler may be on the short list for HHS commissioner, it is likely that the administration will bring forward new faces. Still, Kessler’s life-long anti-tobacco stance and past working relationship with the current head of the Center for Tobacco Products might give an indication of the increased scrutiny of the tobacco sector in the years to come.

    The ENDS industry status quo, from a legislation point of view, while far from ideal, is by now familiar to the ENDS industry. The recent premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) filing deadline has come and gone, and, as expected, we have not seen a flurry of warning letters post-September 2020 ordering certain vapor manufacturers to stop selling their products because they did not submit a PMTA.

    The FDA is, however, expected to start enforcing this legislation sooner or later. For any dramatic change to occur, the governing legislation, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, would have to be amended, which is not likely to be top of the list for the upcoming Congress given the priorities the new administration announced during the election campaign. Still, the House of Representatives, one of the chambers of the U.S. legislature, remains dominated by the Democrats, the same party whose representatives initiated several tobacco-related bills and called for confrontational hearings on vapor products. The most recent one, in February 2020, was relatively tame compared with the tone of the July 2019 Juul hearing and even with the June 2014 Senate hearing. 

    Senate races in Georgia will require runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021. If Democrats gain both Senate seats in Georgia in January, there would be a 50-50 tie in the Senate, and the vice president would have the tie-breaking vote in case the Senate is deadlocked on a piece of legislation. When the House, Senate and White House are controlled by the same party, the chances of the current administration to pass laws in support of its agenda are greatly increased, though divisions exist within each party, and surprises always happen. Furthermore, 34 out of the 100 Senate seats are up for regular election in two years as well as all 435 House seats; these will be a trying two years for Americans in an economic crisis, and the public sentiment can swing in the other direction. Thus, the new president may have only two years, if even that long, to pass a flurry of laws, and there may be more urgent matters than revisiting the Tobacco Control Act, which, for better or for worse, has worked so far.

    The FDA already has broad powers to expand requirements and restrictions involving ENDS products, including the authority to impose product standards through notice-and-comment rulemaking. Ingredient caps and bans are among the standards the FDA has the authority to promulgate via regulation.

    The latest unified agenda of regulatory and deregulatory actions

    As of spring 2020, active regulatory actions include four potential future regulatory actions by the FDA, rolled over from previous agendas, with no clear deadline for publication of a proposed rule:

    • Requirements for Tobacco Product Manufacturing Practice (colloquially referred to as “Good Manufacturing Practices”)
    • Tobacco Product Standard for Characterizing Flavors in Cigars (follow-up to the 2018 Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking); this is unlikely to move into the final rule stage on account of recent courtroom successes by the cigar industry.
    • Modified-risk tobacco product applications; this future proposed rule would establish content and format requirements to ensure that modified-risk tobacco product applications contain sufficient information for the FDA to determine whether it should permit the marketing of a modified-risk tobacco product. Additionally, the proposed rule would set forth the basic procedures for modified-risk tobacco product application review and require applicants receiving authorization to market a modified-risk tobacco product to establish and maintain records, conduct post-market surveillance and studies, and submit annual reports to the FDA.
    • Premarket tobacco product applications and recordkeeping requirements, a 2019 proposed rule, which would have as a next step at some point in the future, likely in 2020, a final rule.

    Notably, ingredient bans and nicotine caps are not on the regulatory agenda. A first step toward an ingredient ban would likely be an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM), although the FDA can in theory skip this step and move directly to a proposed rule, open a docket for comment, collect comments and consider whether it has sufficient information to finalize the rule. Given the complexity of the issue and the current research focusing on flavor ingredients in ENDS, if the FDA determines that an exploration of a flavor ban is desirable, the FDA will probably go through the ANPRM step.

    One would have to wonder, though, why engage in rulemaking when the FDA already reviews all relevant information about every ENDS product on the U.S. market, present and future, through the PMTA process—thus allowing the agency to make a case-by-case determination—and the FDA will no doubt pay considerable attention to certain flavored products. In the author’s personal opinion, the PMTA process is the FDA’s preferred avenue to make decisions on individual products rather than issuing rules on product categories, which can also be challenged—and the current Supreme Court might entertain challenges to the FDA’s behavior if it came to it down the road.

    Meanwhile, the majority of states by number still lean conservative, which likely means fewer developments in taxation, some scrutiny of ENDS but not necessary priority placed on shrinking the lawful ENDS market as there is no immediately quantifiable health benefit from doing so, and many potential harms. Of note are the California litigation and the potential referendum in California to overturn SB 793 (the flavor ban legislation). By the time this you read this article, we should know whether the bill opponents succeeded at collecting the necessary signatures to place the referendum on the November 2022 California elections ballot and suspend the application of the California flavor ban until then and pending the referendum’s outcome.

    The question we must also ask, given the political, public health and economic crisis context is whether ENDS are a threat to anyone and why any administration would, at this juncture, prioritize overregulating a harm reduction asset over the important, systemic changes Americans expect from the administration and drastically mitigating the Covid impact. The industry is likely to consolidate and survive.

    A global legal and compliance nicotine industry expert, Patricia I. Kovacevic has experience that includes general counsel and chief compliance officer roles at Nicopure Labs as well as leading senior legal and regulatory positions at Philip Morris International and Lorillard. Kovacevic served on the board of directors of the Vapor Technology Association and on the advisory board of the Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum. She is the founder of RegulationStrategy, a global legal and compliance FDA-regulated industry consultancy.
  • Known Unknowns

    Known Unknowns

    Andrey Popov | Dreamtime

    The case for realistic optimism in the wake of America’s recent election

    By Chris Greer

    I always admired Donald Rumsfeld’s turn of an opaque phrase. As America’s former secretary of defense memorably explained in a 2002 news briefing on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, crystal ball gazing into the future is nothing if not an embrace of the mist and fog. However, anticipating what may come is not just an amusement, it can be a valuable strategic planning tool during a change of U.S. presidential administrations.

    I am often asked to provide my opinion on picks, replacements and likely policy directions. As president of TMA, I cannot provide an opinion. TMA has, for more than a century, striven to be an unbiased convener and place of understanding for those engaged in the complexities of tobacco and nicotine. So why should you continue to read after I just told you that you are not getting an opinion on leadership picks and policies?

    I think the perspective offered by a more dispassionate observer is warranted and useful to prepare for January’s changes. There are areas we can be realistically optimistic about, and it is more than an aphorism that what comes next is largely a “known unknown.” That is especially true when we consider the natural starting point of conversations like these: comparing the outgoing administration to what we think will happen during the new one.

    A realistic perspective

    I will give you one opinion: I believe few people in the tobacco and nicotine industry or harm/risk reduction stakeholder community consider the last four years an uninterrupted halcyon summer. If you do not share my opinion, then we can all at least agree they were eventful and highly consequential. Just naming a few events off the top of my head reveals:

    • The early but highly prominent miscommunications on e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI)
    • Policy by tweet
    • No exemptions for premium cigars
    • A ban on most mass market flavored electronic nicotine-delivery system (ENDS) sales
    • Uncertain U.S.-China and U.S.-EU trade conditions for leaf and ENDS products
    • A global pandemic and its economic and social consequences
    • An order by a Maryland federal judge that moved forward, by several years to September 2020, due dates for provisional substantial equivalence and premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) submissions for deemed products
    • An order from a Massachusetts federal court directing a rule on cigarette graphic health warnings be promulgated by March 2020

    I ask you, is the reality of the last four years really all that different or better than the preceding eight years? Before you answer, consider my list of highlights and where we find ourselves now: farmers struggling, preliminary consumption data indicating no 2020 decline in cigarette consumption, increasing survey evidence showing more people believe any product containing nicotine is no better than a combustible cigarette, a once-in-a-century global pandemic and resulting economic conditions not seen since the Great Depression.

    Realistically, despite the overall business-friendly orientation of many Trump policies, what occurred over the last four years was profoundly turbulent and challenging to many aspects of tobacco and nicotine and harm/risk reduction efforts. Not feeling so cheery? Sorry, that was not my intention. But this is the reality we face and, therefore, the starting point for your comparison against what might happen under a Biden administration.

     

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    Optimism

    Now for the optimism. Provisional submissions for deemed products, including the entire ENDS category, are at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The proverbial elephant left the room. Seems bleak to lead the optimism section with completion of a regulatory submission that only starts an entirely untested process. But it was a millstone around the industry’s neck. And it was an exposed flank that lead to attacks from public health groups against the FDA. What the FDA does with these submissions will be a point of contention in 2021, but it would have been no matter when the submissions ended up being due.

    Some of the actions on my list of events from the last four years were the result of trends picked up in the National Youth Tobacco Survey and rising anecdotal evidence of an unwelcome rise in youth using ENDS products. Thankfully, 2020’s survey showed 2 million fewer teenagers falling into the survey’s “user” category than in 2019. Optimists may believe that the tide is turning on youth vape issues. There is a lot to be optimistic about here: Fewer kids taking up vapor products is good for everyone. This trend may absorb a lot of the electricity generated over the last few years. Quieter contemplation may be good for all stakeholders.

    The FDA was also busy making history with several breakthrough authorizations. These include the first modified-risk marketing order for Swedish Match’s General snus and the first modified exposure order for Philip Morris International’s (PMI) IQOS and Marlboro Heat Sticks. This is a big deal. They are not only the first instances of tobacco products that can legally claim users will experience a reduced risk or exposure to smoking-related illness (with exclusive use), but they open the pathway to a number of other products that sit on the lower end of the risk spectrum. Most encouragingly, this was done without hyperbole, based on evidence, following a rigorous but clear(ish) process, in a climate of open hostility toward nicotine-containing products, and it is repeatable for other products pending before the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP).

    Lastly, I am writing at the end of 2020, the year best described as a dumpster fire. I feel good that the year is ending, and we have not endured anything else. Honestly, I would not be surprised if we are attacked by the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man or wake up to aliens landing on the National Mall. There is a vaccine or three on the horizon. I am optimistic 2020 will end, and we will all be glad that it never again darkens our doors.

    Knowns and unknowns: Knowing the difference

    We know things will change. Focus will shift, emphasis will alight on other priorities, political appointments in federal public health agencies will be filled by new people. All of this will occur in the charged atmosphere of a global pandemic, a highly fractured political environment and during an economic crisis.

    The biggest unknown is the capacity of the Biden administration to deal with issues not related to the big four: ending the pandemic; addressing the pandemic’s economic fallout; addressing the erosion of faith in the basics of the American political system; and finding the political capital to execute the new administration’s core economic agenda. Each one of these could easily consume all the new administration’s time, energy and goodwill.

    It would be reasonable to assume that, regardless of the outcome of Georgia’s January runoff election, the partisan disfunction and the math of Congressional majorities that frustrated much of the Trump legislative agenda after the 2018 mid-terms will persist into the Biden administration. Therefore, a Biden legislative agenda will be difficult to achieve, and the administration will likely be more active on the administrative and regulatory front, especially for noncore issues.

    That leaves the tobacco, nicotine and harm reduction agenda in an exposed position, especially given the powers in the vast and unexplored space of product standards. It is conceivable that an active FDA commissioner would implement a more expansive regulatory agenda. However, we must consider the reality of the situation confronting the Biden health policy team.

    We are not facing the same level of pressure or attention. Youth ENDS use is trending down. The CTP is quite busy with PMTA submissions. Pathways for modified-risk products, with very robust post-market surveillance, are now functioning and have a pipeline of pending applications. And most curiously, EVALI now languishes in that part of the internet where forgotten news and Paris Hilton reside.

    It is a fact that most of the people on the list for responsible positions within the Biden health team have track records in prior offices, or have advanced public positions, that are considered challenging for many harm reductionists and certainly for the industry itself. However, as we have all come to know, facts and truth are different. Truth, while composed in part of facts, is also made of other things like circumstances, possibility, achievability, consequences and priorities. The truth is, we simply do not know what will happen. However, it is equally truthful to point out that the overall instability of the country and an already full plate of the industry’s primary regulator suggests the frying pans remain filled with a lot of uncooked fish.  

    So, what is my point? Well, we can surmise that tobacco, nicotine and harm reduction will not be a core focus of the Biden administration. Statutory action is unlikely, bouncing the action back to the regulatory sphere. However, the responsible regulatory agencies are also the ones hopefully closing out the pandemic. Some of the key pressure points that emerged during the Trump administration are shrinking, and the CTP has a few items already in its “In” box. What people have done or said in the past is instructive but not determinate for what will occur in the future. Most importantly, and it cannot be understated, one of the core principals of U.S. public health regulation is a basis in evidence and the rule of law.

    On this last point, I will veer into opinion once again because my position affords me the ability to compare regulatory structures around the world. The people I meet in responsible federal regulatory positions are thoughtful and dedicated. They always strike me as committed to their mission of going where the science and evidence takes them, upholding the rule of law and taking action in the best interests of the American people—and that includes adult Americans who smoke or are choosing to transition away from smoking using reduced-risk products. Likewise, the industry and large parts of the stakeholder community are similarly dedicated to these principals.

    I do look with realistic optimism at the next four years under President Biden. I think we will experience a recovery from the social and economic dislocation caused by Covid-19, and that includes struggling segments of tobacco and nicotine like retailers, small manufacturers, distributors and growers. I trust that our nation can begin to recover and reconcile from the caustic divisiveness that mars our conversations of late. And I hope we can see that fellow Americans are people who may hold different views but are not the enemy incarnate.

    The reality of 2021 is much like the reality of 2018–2020: It’s mostly unknown. It is highly charged and divided. It is uncertain and dynamic in ways both positive and negative. It also holds opportunities for the stakeholder community to engage constructively with our regulators as we examine the issue of nicotine and harm reduction. With everyone at the table, dedicated to similar purposes, all stakeholders can advance policies and enact programs that continue to nurture the seeds planted over the last four years.

    I invite all stakeholders to use forums like TMA for that purpose. We stand ready to assist the community to turn uncertainty into positive action. Change is unavoidable; the only choice we have is to be shaped by it or take a shot at being the sculptor.

    Chris Greer is the president and CEO of TMA. Before joining TMA, he was director of corporate affairs and communications at JTI USA. He joined the tobacco and nicotine community from telecommunications and has spent his career in government and regulatory affairs, compliance, and corporate communications. Founded in 1915, TMA is a member-driven organization dedicated to convening all stakeholders in open, welcoming forums and providing unbiased information and understanding.
  • Cashless Lowers Hurdle to Higher Prices

    Cashless Lowers Hurdle to Higher Prices

    Photo: Colleen Williams

    The rise of cashless payments in Japan is helping breach an invisible barrier to raising cigarette prices, according to an article in Nikkei Asia.

    Japan’s tobacco companies have long held on to an unwritten rule to never raise the cost of a pack of cigarettes above ¥500 ($4.79), the domination of the country’s most valuable coin.

    That barrier allowed for easy transactions. A consumer could walk into a shop, slap loose change on the counter and walk away with a pack.

    The penetration of cashless transactions, however, has eased price sensitivity, according to Naohiro Minami, chief financial officer at Japan Tobacco.

    After the company raised the cost of some cigarette products by ¥50 on Oct. 1, it experienced less “rush demand” than anticipated.

    Driven in part by the coronavirus pandemic, cashless payments reached a 27 percent of all transactions last year, according to data from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Compared with other nations, however, Japan’s rate of cashless transactions remains low. Great Britain and China boast more than 60 percent penetration, according to METI, and the proportion in South Korea is above 90 percent.

  • Japan: Smoking Drops to Record Low

    Japan: Smoking Drops to Record Low

    Photo: Colleen Williams

    Japan’s smoking rate fell to a record low last year, reports NHK World, citing to a government survey.

    The health ministry surveyed about 5,700 people aged 20 or over last November.

    The percentage of men and women who regularly smoke stood at 16.7 percent. That’s down 1.1 percentage points from a year earlier, and the lowest since the survey began in 1986.

    The ratio for men was 27.1 percent, down 11.1 points over the past decade. The figure for women was 7.6 percent, down 3.3 points over the same period.

    During the recent virtual Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum, experts attributed Japan’s rapid decline in traditional smoking to the emergence of heated tobacco products.

    Of male smokers who participated in the recent survey, 27.2 percent said they use heated tobacco products, while 25.2 percent of female smokers said they do so.

    The health ministry aims to lower the smoking rate to 12 percent by fiscal 2022.

  • Tobacco Firms Fined for ‘Distorting Competition’

    Tobacco Firms Fined for ‘Distorting Competition’

    Photo: Eugene-Onischenko

    The Dutch competition watchdog has fined Philip Morris (PM) Benelux, British American Tobacco (BAT), Japan Tobacco International (JTI) and Van Nelle Tabak a total of €82 million ($95.7 million) for “distorting competition,” according to Reuters.

    BAT was fined €31.2 million, PM Benelux was fined €27.5 million, JTI was fined €13 million and Van Nelle Tabak was fined €10.4 million.

    The Authority for Consumers and Markets claims the companies illegally exchanged future pricing plan information between 2008 and 2011 in order to adjust their own prices. The companies have all filed objections. Three of the companies went to court to attempt to stop the publication of the ACM’s decision, but the court denied that request.

  • Smoking Now Viewed as a ‘Moral Offense’

    Smoking Now Viewed as a ‘Moral Offense’

    Vyacheslav Dumchev | Dreamstime.com

    The Freedom Organization for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco (Forest) released a new report stating that “smoking is no longer seen merely as a health risk to the consumer but as a moral offense to be kept ‘out of sight, out of mind.’”

    The report follows an uptick in smoking and vaping bans across England, Wales and Scotland. Freedom of Information requests were made to 340 authorities in England and Wales and 32 authorities in Scotland; 283 provided responses.

    More than 100 councils banned smoking outside council buildings and on council grounds, and 68 percent of councils had a policy restricting smoking and vaping for employees during working hours. There were 49 councils that banned smoking and vaping breaks completely, even if workers were clocked out, and the bans also included walking between work appointments.

    Many councils, says the report, are introducing outdoor smoking bans by stealth. “This isn’t about the risk of passive smoking, it’s a moral crusade,” said Josie Appleton, author of the report. “Smoking is being treated as a shameful activity that should never be seen in public spaces or near official buildings.”

    Absurdly, according to Forest, some councils are stopping their workers from vaping too, which makes it harder for smokers to give up. “It would be better if councils focused on providing public services rather than interfering in the lifestyle choices of their employees and residents,” Forest wrote in its report.  

  • Filter Cigarettes Sales to Drop this Year

    Filter Cigarettes Sales to Drop this Year

    Photo: Tobacco Reporter archive

    Sales of filter cigarettes are expected to decline this year, according to the latest estimates from GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

    Filter cigarettes remain the largest-selling tobacco product with global forecast sales of $651 billion in 2020, an 8 percent drop on sales of $707 billion in 2019.

    This is a potential revenue loss of $56 billion for the tobacco industry as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to cause significant numbers of consumers to quit tobacco products. For plain cigarettes, the fall is higher at 11 percent, and in niche categories like chewing tobacco, forecast sales are expected to drop by 13 percent in 2020. 
     
    “Our data seems to corroborate what others, such as University College London, have found—people are quitting tobacco during the pandemic, and this is especially pronounced among younger people,” said Ryan Whittaker, consumer analyst at GlobalData. “Many younger consumers are working in less secure jobs and are more likely to move back with their parents upon losing employment.
     
    “Lower disposable income from lack of employment, lockdown-related closures and social distancing have all resulted in fewer social settings for smokers. GlobalData’s most recent consumer survey found that around 8 percent of global consumers, which included more millennials than any other age group, intend to stop buying tobacco and tobacco alternatives, considering them to be beyond their current shopping budgets.
     
    “Regardless of age, many consumers are understandably concerned about their respiratory health due to Covid-19’s propensity to attack the lungs. Our survey also found that over a quarter (26 percent) of global consumers are extremely concerned about their physical fitness and health with only 14 percent saying they are not concerned at all. 
     
    “As things stand, we expect that it will take at least until 2023 for global tobacco sales values to fully recover.”

  • Qom Designated Smoke-Free City

    Qom Designated Smoke-Free City

    Photo: mostafa meraji from Pixabay

    Iran declared Qom as the country’s first tobacco-free city, reports The Tehran Times.
     
    The announcement starts a five-year plan that will eventually include 63 cities and 63 villages in the country. The plan will regulate the sale, supply and use of tobacco to protect people from secondhand smoke. Direct and indirect incentive mechanisms will be restricted, and tobacco users will be encouraged to quit smoking.
     
    The plan is expected to gradually reduce the prevalence of smoking in the targeted areas.