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  • Panel: Regulation: International Perspectives

    Panel: Regulation: International Perspectives

    Regulation of nicotine products is at a tipping point, said David Bertram, director at EUK Consulting, who moderated the panel. Generational bans and mandatory nicotine reduction for combustible cigarettes have been introduced, whereas taxation of flavors and the move against disposable vapes have the potential to threaten the whole next-generation products (NGPs) category. Panelists provided overviews of the regulatory situation in their respective countries.

    Dave Dobbins, former chief operating officer of the American Legacy Foundation/Truth Initiative, criticized the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authorization process for novel products as lacking order. He called for the agency to “clear the field.” “The FDA has two choices: either a market serviced by unregulated actors that don’t have to report to the agency and don’t follow its rules, mandates and instructions or a robust market of approved products that fulfill the demand for adult consumers, and then the FDA can focus its enforcement on actors targeting youth.” The agency, he added, could use its power of post-market surveillance and regulation. Dobbins was concerned that the FDA was paralyzed by fear, making it unable to analyze the benefits of reduced-risk products (RRPs) for adult smokers.

    Adam Afriyie, member of Parliament for Windsor, U.K., said his country was in the pole position in tobacco harm reduction (THR) because of five factors: operating according to the principles of THR and encouraging the good instead of the perfect; treating RRPs as consumer products not medicine; encouraging public bodies to spread the word; trying to de-politicize the issue; and applying pragmatism as a response to changes. Pointing out that the U.K. government was currently consulting on disposable vapes and underage vaping on the base of evidence, he argued that it would only ban the products if this made sense from a point of view of harm reduction to the environment, children and healthcare. Regarding the upcoming tenth Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Afriyie said he was encouraging his contacts to help the U.K. delegation feel sufficiently emboldened to stress that THR needs to be the principle behind regulation and that a greater degree of transparency is required in how decisions at the COP are made.

    In its traditionally heavy regulation of nicotine products, Australia has always been driven by health considerations, according to Kezia Purick, member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly for Goyder, Australia. Tobacco-related diseases are the single biggest cause of death from behavioral risks in the country, with the disadvantaged indigenous population being affected most. Australia banned all tobacco advertising in 1976 and was the first country to introduce plain packaging in 2012. Nicotine vape products are available only from pharmacies with a doctor’s prescription. Health Minister Butler’s approach to ban all disposable vapes is primarily driven by concerns about the rising popularity of vaping among young school children. Purick expects regulation of RRPs to become ever stricter in the future.

    Marina Foltea, managing director at Trade Pacts Consultancy, outlined the complex policy-making process in the European Union. Directives, such as the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), are binding for all 27 member states and have to be transposed into national law to take effect. The revision of the present TPD2, which already has strict requirements for combustible cigarettes and sets clear product standards for vape products, is currently being discussed. The regulation of tobacco products in the EU is regarded as a model by many countries. However, Foltea said, she didn’t see any explicit recognition of THR in the EU system. “But if you already have this category in the TPD, this means some indirect recognition,” she noted.

    Douglas Ming Deng, head of the NGPs Industry Study at Yunnan University, reminded his listeners of Asian diversity and the resulting differences in regulation of NGPs across countries. South Korea and Japan, he emphasized, have set up good tobacco control systems together with the provision of suitable RRPs, thus becoming blueprints for other countries to follow. He noted that the industry had changed more rapidly in the past 20 years than it had in the century before, meaning the sector was no longer static but dynamic. “As a consequence, regulators, consumers and the industry don’t know each other as they did in the combustible era,” Deng said. “Regulators should study the industry and vice versa.”

  • Investor Panel

    Investor Panel

    This year’s panel looked at how investors view the industry’s transformation and the challenges regulations hold for the further proliferation of reduced-risk products. Among the multinational players, Philip Morris International leads the pack regarding performance of smoke-free products. In the first half of 2023, 34.1 percent of its revenues were generated by such offerings. The acquisition of Swedish Match has catapulted PMI forward in the smokeless category. At BAT, the segment accounted for 16.6 percent of revenues. It was followed by Imperial Brands, with 3.7 percent, and Japan Tobacco, with 3.2 percent. With an operating margin of around 39 percent in 2022, PMI also achieves higher profitability from the category than BAT and JT, which plan to break even by 2024 and 2028, respectively.

    With the introduction of its heated-tobacco product (HTP) brand IQOS in Japan in November 2014, PMI started a success story—reduced-risk products (RRPs) currently account for 37 percent of the country’s tobacco market. Using its first-mover advantage, PMI today holds around 72 percent of the HTP market followed by BAT with 18 percent. JT, which was relatively late to launch Ploom Tech in its domestic market, stands at 10 percent.

    In South Korea, the world’s second-largest HTP market after Japan, PMI’s first-mover advantage was shorter lived as KT&G responded with the introduction of Lil only six months after IQOS had entered the market. The HTP category now represents 19.2 percent of South Korea’s tobacco market, with KT&G being the leading player with a share of 47 percent followed by PMI (41 percent) and BAT (12 percent).

    In addition to Japan and South Korea, Sweden and the U.K. provide examples of how a tobacco harm reduction approach can lower smoking rates. Using these countries as models for others, however, is difficult as the conditions for the success of RRPs vary. In Japan, for instance, HTPs are under the authority of the ministry of finance and looked at from a taxation point of view. They are also boosted by the fact that nicotine vaping is prohibited. In the U.K., government and health bodies have been supportive of RRPs, which played a significant part in the success of the category. Furthermore, there’s a significant price gap between combustible cigarettes and RRPs in the U.K., which nudges consumers toward the latter. In Sweden, the transition to less hazardous products was driven by consumers without government support.

    In general, publicly listed, multinational companies are pushing transformation harder than privately held, single-country companies as demonstrated by the Tobacco Transformation Index, which ranks the world’s 15 largest tobacco companies on their relative progress toward harm reduction. In many countries where the latter are operating, RRPs are banned and the cost of cigarettes is low, so there’s little incentive for these companies to change.

    Companies with a strong exposure to the U.S. market, such as Altria, BAT and Imperial, continue to face regulatory uncertainty. Investors, however, want clarity. In August, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration missed another deadline to finalize its long-anticipated rule prohibiting the use of menthol in cigarettes. The recent Udall-Reagan report on FDA proceedings called for more clarity to ease the burden on the agency and increase efficiency, but panelists were pessimistic that the FDA will put recommendations into practice.

    The upcoming tenth Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is expected to bring new, illogical restrictions on RRPs, judging from proposals published in advance, such as a redefinition of aerosol as smoke. Panelists feared that with an “any risk is bad” approach, RRPs will increasingly be treated like combustible cigarettes.

     

  • Snowplus to Launch Gold Bar and Clic in U.K.

    Snowplus to Launch Gold Bar and Clic in U.K.

    Snowplus will soon launch two all-new disposable e-cigarettes. The Snowplus Gold Bar and Snowplus Clic are the first 5,000 puffs TPD-compliant devices to come to market, according to an emailed press release.

    Debuting at the Vaper Expo UK, to be held from October 27-29 in Birmingham, England, the new products represent a “pioneering innovation” in the vaping market, according to Snowplus.

    “The Snowplus Gold Bar will be the game-changer in the industry, it will definitely lead the product development direction,” said a Snowplus spokesperson. “A 5,000-puff TPD disposable vape has never been seen in the UK market before.”

    All vaping products sold in the UK must comply with the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). Most legal disposable vaping products in the UK deliver less than 800 puffs in order to meet TPD requirements.

    The Gold Bar and Clic models both feature transparent e-liquid tanks that give users a clear, real-time view of remaining juice levels. The products also utilize lab-tested mesh coils made of specialized materials to deliver consistent and authentic flavor across 16 different juice options.

    “Snowplus has pioneered responsible innovation since its founding in 2019,” the release states. “With $40 million in funding from renowned investors like Sequoia Capital, the company aims to provide better alternatives to combustible cigarettes for adult consumers.”

    The Snowplus Gold Bar and Clic have also passed numerous third-party safety tests.

  • Fireside Chat: Talking About COP10

    Fireside Chat: Talking About COP10

    The upcoming 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which will take place this November in Panama, was the theme of a “fireside chat” moderated by Chris Kodderman, director of Kodderman Public Affairs.

    The disinformation that is making physicians skeptical about reduced-risk products and the misinterpretation of the FCTC’s Article 5.3 are the two biggest impediments to tobacco harm reduction (THR), said global health advocate Derek Yach, who was significantly involved in shaping the FCTC treaty. In his prework on the FCTC, Yach related, he invited tobacco companies to hear directly from them how the complex health problems relating to tobacco could be solved. “We never built on that, and then the shutters came down.”

    Flora Okereke, head of global regulatory insights and foresights at BAT, said the opportunity in COP10 lay in the fact that both the industry and public health have the same goal: getting people off cigarettes. In addition, she reminded her audience that the treaty mentions THR, which seems to suggest that it’s possible for countries to explore alternative ways of reducing smoking apart from handling the demand and supply side. “That provision has never been talked about in COP,” said Okereke. “We now have an array of reduced-risk products, consumers who have indicated that they can live with these products, and countries with experiences that are proof that adopting this THR approach as a policy has led to a decline in smoking rates.”

    Recent WHO documents, reports and statements suggest that the global health body is skeptical about the role of smoke-free alternatives in smoking cessation and concerned about underage access—a sentiment that will likely be echoed by the convention secretariat at COP10, Okereke said. “However, the treaty makes it clear that the power for decision-making is within the parties, insisting that decisions are made by consensus. If parties wanted to share their positive experience with THR, this is an opportunity for them to start requesting an independent team to evaluate the role of these products. All they would have to do is use their mandate effectively and withhold their consensus.”

    Yach pointed out that by developing guidelines on Article 5.3, the secretariat went beyond their legal briefs. “All of the guidelines that include words such as ‘banning,’ ‘demonizing,’ [and] ‘excluding’ in my view are against international law,” said Yach. “We have allowed these guidelines to slip away as if they are facts, but they’re not, and they need to be challenged legally. The member states are the best to do this.”

    At COP10, Yach recommended, countries with positive experiences with THR should share the positive changes that their policies have brought about. He also called for the industry to come together in a consortium to take concerted action. “It is long overdue that tobacco companies, despite competition, recognize that there are some areas where they must come together and present a united front that, I believe, would build confidence in their long-term intent.”

    For this approach, Yach singled out two areas: “A commitment made between the industry to prevent youth access would be very powerful.” In addition, he said, referring to an example where pharma giant Merck collaborated with the WHO to eliminate river blindness disease in West Africa and committed to making the drug forever, the tobacco industry should harness the use of nicotine pouches and snus. “This way, they could eliminate oral cancer in South Asia,” said Yach. “If they were to make that bold statement that they want to do this with the WHO, member states and all other private and nongovernmental organizations together, this would be a surprising and bold move that would get people to take note, particularly the people in these countries who are dying at the rate of 350,000 per year.”

  • Keynote: Ming Deng

    Keynote: Ming Deng

    Douglas Meng Deng, head of Next-Generation Products (NGPs) Industry Study at Yunnan University, provided an Asian view of regulation and innovation in NGPs. Evidence from bibliometrics, he pointed out, had shown that the number of articles and the frequency of citations on tobacco harm reduction (THR) have been steadily increasing. There has been dualization and dichotomy of studies of the role of NGPs in THR. Studies are either carried out by academic institutions or by the tobacco industry, and there is hardly any cooperation among multinational tobacco companies.

    In his research of NGP regulation in Asia, Deng focused on the five countries with the largest populations and the largest number of smokers. In Japan, Deng explained, e-cigarettes containing nicotine were regarded as drugs, requiring a prescription from a doctor, which resembles a ban. By contrast, nicotine-free e-cigarettes are a niche product that can be commercialized without any flavor restrictions. In terms of tobacco taxation, heated-tobacco products (HTPs) are favored. The country has seen a decline in cigarette sales along with a surge in HTP combustible sales. Studies published in BMJ have stated a decrease in hospitalizations for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and ischemic heart disease following the introduction of HTPs in Japan.

    China implemented a comprehensive regulatory framework for NGPs called “1+2+N” in October 2022. It allows tobacco-flavored products only. Manufacturers, brand owners and retailers are obliged to obtain licenses. Electronic nicotine-delivery systems are subject to premarket review and approval, and HTPs are regulated as cigarettes. “E-cigarette penetration in China was never above 2 percent, and it has been decreasing further since the regulation was introduced,” Deng said. “The portfolio performance of listed vape companies has fluctuated drastically.”

    Indonesia permits HTPs and e-cigarettes, allows online sales and regards national standards as an endorsement rather than mandatory. Multinationals’ HTPs have gained significant traction, Deng stated, showing that the country could potentially become a hub for NGPs in Asia.

    By contrast, India has chosen to ban e-cigarettes and HTPs completely with its 2019 E-Cigarette Act. Offenders face penalties including a one-year jail term or a fine of inr100,000 ($1,202) or both. “The ban has led to a flourishing illicit market,” Deng said. “Insufficient controls together with weak age verification will probably raise the question about the effect of both tobacco control and THR in the country.”

    Properties of NGPs, which the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) began discussing at its fourth Conference of the Parties (COP4), are still vague within the FCTC context, an ambiguity potentially leading to regulatory loopholes among member states.

    Deng highlighted two innovations in the field of HTPs. South Korean KT&G’s Lil Aible integrates an artificial intelligence of things application in its heated-tobacco units while combining features of both vape products and HTPs. “The convergence of the two technologies may represent a future trend.”

    NSC of China offers a product with an oxygen-free environment in which sticks are being heated, potentially offering a superior smoking experience, Deng explained. “Both developments underscore a fundamental principle in NGPs: understanding customer needs.”

    Deng recommended that the next Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the FCTC, which will take place in Panama this November, clarify the harm reduction properties of NGPs. The FCTC itself, he said, should also undertake rigorous, evidence-driven research and faster communication with the industry.

    For state-level regulators, Deng proposed introducing the regulator’s sandbox into NGP regulation and shifting from the “wait and improve” approach to “test and innovate.” “Regulatory sandboxes, commonly used in the financial sector, allow NGPs to be regulated at a close loop and encourage enterprises to innovate at the same time,” Deng said. “Regulators may monitor testing in real time while enterprises can get regulatory feedback simultaneously and adjust R&D accordingly.”

    Deng called for the industry to engage in evidence-based and science-based studies and actively pursue publication. Multinationals, he argued, should cultivate the market through patent openness. “The industry is ready to enter the next curve of entrepreneurship, but it should keep in mind to innovate toward THR, not for youth, and facing ESG. Entrepreneurship and rapid commercialization of NGPs in Asia [are] the tobacco industry’s future, provided it can seamlessly integrate into the global tobacco value chain.”

    He urged stakeholders to recognize that the diversity and multitude of cultures and languages in Asia demands a nuanced approach. “The multinationals should leverage the expertise of local Asian talents to solve issues specific to the region.”

  • Bonus Content: Brent Taylor

    Bonus Content: Brent Taylor

    Brent Taylor, managing director of consumer marketplace insights and innovation at Altria Client Services, emphasized that his company wanted to make sure that the adult consumer’s voice is heard and embedded in all of Altria’s decision-making regarding regulation, innovation and science discussions for tobacco harm reduction (THR). The latter, he pointed out, rests on three pillars: youth smoking prevention, cessation support and switching adult smokers to reduced-risk products. The U.S. currently has 42 million adult tobacco users, of whom 28 million smoke combustible cigarettes, 6 million consume smokeless tobacco, 8 million smoke cigars, and 14 million use e-cigarettes.

    According to an Altria survey, over 50 percent of adult smokers are interested in switching to a less hazardous alternative. To understand the barriers that keep many of them from changing, Taylor, a former smoker himself who had successfully switched to smoke-free products six years ago, in 2021 set up Project 2021, a deep ethnographic research study that followed 21 consumers for 21 days on their journey away from cigarettes. Participants were asked to catalogue their behavior via video diaries daily, and study investigators had check-ins with them routinely to understand how this journey was going for them. After three months and six months, respectively, there were follow-up interviews to examine the long-term impact that short experience had on consumers.

    After six months, 16 of the 21 participants had switched completely to smoke-free alternatives. The balance significantly reduced cigarette consumption—down, for example, from one pack per day to one or two cigarettes. “It’s all about the mindset,” Taylor said. “Consumers will only be able to make this change if they want to make this change.” The survey also showed that external factors can influence smokers on this journey—having had a bad day, for instance, would make them go back to using a cigarette. Becoming smoke-free was liberating and opened new opportunities for participants, allowing them to move into a smoke-free apartment or date nonsmokers, for example.

    The study made clear that a support system was required in the journey to becoming a nonsmoker and that the experience was emotional and complicated, with many ups and downs through their daily life, all of which affected their success. “There’s no single way that each of these consumers approach this journey,” Taylor explained. “To accelerate THR, we need to recognize that smokers are not a monolith but represent a vast cross section of adults, different races and incomes, different genders. We need to make sure that we identify which types of clusters exists among that population so that we can design messaging and products that really cater to these different types of people.”

    Altria also looked at usage moments of cigarettes. “Smokers use cigarettes either to detach from the world to take a break or to engage with other people,” Tayor said. “If you layer these two areas, there are barriers and motivators for switching across each. We need to think of a portfolio of products to address the needs of consumers throughout the day. The tobacco space is starting to behave like the beverage category, with a proliferation of options for consumers. They might choose a different product first thing in the morning versus throughout their workday versus in the evening.”

    To help them transition to reduced-risk alternatives, he added, smokers are very much in favor of THR over prohibitionist methods. They also want options in the marketplace and choose different products, also throughout the day. Misperceptions of nicotine, however, are widely spread, with 80 percent of adult smokers believing that nicotine is a carcinogen. “The key is to always start with the consumer and build empathy with adults who smoke. The highest form of knowledge is empathy. It allows us to step into the shoes of others so we can create real change.”

  • Panel: Youth Use

    Panel: Youth Use

    Youth use is everyone’s responsibility. It’s also the name of the GTNF panel that focused on how to balance preventing youth use with helping combustible cigarette smokers move toward less risky nicotine products. The panel’s moderator, Stacy Ehrlich, partner at Kleinfeld Kaplan and Becker, encouraged panelists to debate whether abstinence is a realistic or appropriate goal when attempting to combat youth use.

    “Hopefully, speakers will address that and whether and how to communicate with youth and children about relative risks and progress. I think an interesting question is: Are youth an unintended population for these communications?” said Ehrlich, referring to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s acknowledgment that e-cigarettes are less harmful than combustible cigarettes. “Should we be communicating with underage individuals about consumer risk?”

    All the panelists were given the opportunity to make a short presentation. Jasjit Ahluwalia, professor of behavioral and social sciences and professor of medicine at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at the Brown University School of Public Health and Alpert School of Medicine, said that tobacco addiction is a pediatric disease and noted that many diseases resulting from tobacco use were effectively human caused, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, as 95 percent of cases were the result of tobacco use.

    He also stated that youth use of tobacco and nicotine was unethical as young people are uninformed consumers. However, he noted that communicating risk to this group was complicated. He said that tobacco prevention campaigns are key.

    “This is something that we know [is] important to effectively educate youth,” said Ahluwalia. “I’m mindful of the importance of the issue of spillover … this is, again, a careful area where I think it’s important that we’re mindful of what the impact is on the intended population and mitigating risk for the unintended population, which in this case, I believe is adult smokers that you want to make sure that they’re not scared away from using an e-cigarette that could potentially be beneficial for them to transition completely from combustibles.”

    Ahluwalia also highlighted the vast amount of misinformation that had been communicated through anti-vaping/smoking campaigns, noting the role of the media in misrepresenting the science behind vaping products. He stated that the industry needed to focus on innovating safer and better products. He also called for the FDA to approve new smoking cessation medications. Lastly, Ahluwalia stated that a goal of zero youth use was unrealistic and unreasonable.

    Brian King, director of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products, explained that youth prevention continued to be a critical part of the FDA’s portfolio since nine out of 10 adult smokers started smoking below the age of 18. He noted that the youth were using a variety of different products, with the use of e-cigarettes being particularly prominent.

    “Youth prevention is a key component of FDA’s portfolio … we do see kids using a variety of different products. But right now, the focus is primarily on e-cigarettes,” explained King. “We’ve seen an evolution within even that product class as well, which I think is important for us to consider as we talk about what the inherent risks of these products are, particularly when it comes to dependency. That said, although we’ve seen declines in e-cigarette use, which again, we’ve noticed, is a good thing, among the kids who are currently using e-cigarettes, we’re seeing increased signs of dependency.”

    King said the FDA is held by the standard of being “appropriate for the protection of public health.” This is not like the other centers at the FDA, such as the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), which has a “safe and effective standard.” In therapeutics, the CDER wants products to be safe for people to use but also effective at treating the ailment.

    “When it comes to tobacco products, the U.S. Congress has given us appropriate for the protection of public health, where we have to weigh the benefits and the risks. That said, the risks are typically focused on youth initiation. And we have made decisions based on that,” King told attendees. “The primary reason you’re seeing a variety of negative actions that have been taken on e-cigarettes is because of the prominent youth use of these products. It certainly is possible to mitigate that risk. For example, we know that youth have very little [interest in] tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes, which are the products that have been authorized to date because that benefit of adults has been able to outweigh the risk of kids.”

    Colin Mendelsohn, general practitioner and founding chair of the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association, said that current vaping policy is largely driven by fears over youth vaping. The scientific evidence of vaping is being overlooked. He stated that children should not vape or smoke; however, he acknowledged, it is inevitable that some will. Mendelsohn argued that most youth vaping was experimental, with frequent vaping being rare.

    “I think policy around e-cigarettes is largely driven by youth [and] flavor. And I think it should be driven by the evidence, not by emotion and moral values,” he said. “What I’m going to talk about is actual evidence, or at least the best evidence we have today. Kids shouldn’t vape or smoke. They shouldn’t be using alcohol or useless drugs. Of course, they do lots of things they shouldn’t do.”

    Mendelsohn said his research showed that only 3 percent of children who had vaped were frequent vapers, with half of those also being smokers. This evidence, he said, showed that vaping was not a gateway to smoking. He said that the opposite was true, and vaping was diverting kids away from smoking combustible cigarettes.

    “I think we all agree that vaping is not a significant gateway to smoking,” said Mendelsohn. “If there were a significant gateway, we would expect to see smoking rates going up. And of course, they’re going in the opposite direction. In the U.S., when vapes became popular, smoking rates continued to decline. In fact, they declined faster than they ever had compared to the historical period before 2013 since vaping became available.”

    Stefanie Miller, vice president of external engagement at Juul Labs, said one of the reasons why she wanted to join Juul Labs is that she gets to say that Juul has a problem with youth use. “We don’t need to skirt around that. So I’m going to talk to you about what this company has done to successfully deal with youth using the product,” she said. “We took what we consider a three-pillar approach … it has been a productive initiative that we’ve taken …. It’s limiting underage appeal, restricting underage access and enforcing against third parties, enforcing against illicit products.”

    Miller said Juul Labs is also using technology and innovation to help in the company’s fight against youth use. However, Juul Labs is also looking at how initiatives that are put in place to prevent youth use impact adults making the switch from combustible cigarettes. “We’re also considering what these interventions would do to make it potentially more difficult for an adult smoker to have access to a less harmful product, which is not the goal of our company,” said Miller. “We’re trying to walk this really careful line, both from the innovation but also the point-of-sale intervention along these three lines.”

    Many of the questions coming from the audience were directed at King concerning the FDA premarket tobacco product authorization process. For example, Fadi Maayta, the CEO and co-founder of Alternative Nicotine Delivery Solutions (ANDS), a Dubai-based vaping product manufacturer, asked King to explain why the agency does not do more to incentivize law-abiding players. The FDA’s current penalty framework, he argued, penalizes good and bad players alike.

    King said he understood Maayta’s frustration. There are numerous good players in the vaping industry that don’t have the issues of youth uptake, he acknowledged. The reality, however, is that the U.S. Congress wrote the Tobacco Control Act and prescribed very specific processes that the agency is required to do by law, said King.

    “That said, the intent is not to penalize everyone … but we do have to follow the law in terms of implementing the regulations that have been required by us. And that includes a premarket tobacco product process and a rigorous scientific assessment …. We also have to enforce the law, and we are a free market paradigm. So there’s no safe harbor. If you don’t have authorization, your product is subject to enforcement compliance,” explained King. “That said, are there opportunities to streamline those processes? Absolutely. And that’s what we’re looking at. There are efficiencies that I think we can gain by looking at our processes to make it more streamlined moving forward.”

  • Panel: Innovating Products for the Future

    Panel: Innovating Products for the Future

    Discussing the future of innovation in nicotine products is complicated. The industry is innovating at lightning speed, especially in batteries and atomization. However, manufacturers don’t often want to discuss innovations in progress because competition in the next-generation nicotine-delivery segment is fierce. It’s not uncommon for a company to launch a new innovative design only to see its IP stolen and used in counterfeit products.

    During the panel “Innovating Products for the Future,” moderator Eve Wang, executive director of Smoore International and vice president of Shenzhen Smoore Technology Co., questioned five industry experts about how they imagine the future of the vaping industry. The participants agreed that innovation would continue boosting the harm reduction potential of next-generation nicotine-delivery products. Surprisingly, they all willingly shared interesting insights into new product innovation.

    Tao Cui, director of innovation, strategy and compliance at Innokin Technology, said that future vaping products will likely be more individualized, more efficient and more intelligent. He also said that products will continue to become less harmful. He said the heating element is especially an area that will see more innovation.

    “In a perfect scenario, you can control the temperature as low as possible and also precisely control it. And, if you have a much, much less harmful substance, we combine both together, then we have a less harmful product,” he said. “In the future, I would say the products will be more individualized because no one product fits 1 billion people. In the future, your product may adapt to your habits. The product may know if you need more [puffs] in the morning, in the afternoon, today or tomorrow.”

    Cui outlined some potential solutions for sustainability-related issues, including the use of research and development. He proposed that countries that have successfully controlled youth usage could offer insight; they could accomplish this by better regulating flavor names and packaging.

    James Kuang, chief scientist and head of the Life Science Institute at ICCPP, parent to Voopoo vaping products, stated that the innovation of products is needed to balance user experience, harm reduction and environmental protection. “Yes, we should develop some [better batteries] and [e-liquid bases] for that. “We talk about the effective battery …. Can we do something for our environment by developing different [e-liquids]? I say if we can develop some new type of [e-liquid base] … for example, can we use some nature-sourced alcohol? …. Another solution, I think, is a water-based solution. In my opinion, a water-based [solution] may be the best product for the future.”

    Fadi Maayta, president and co-founder of Alternative Nicotine Delivery Solutions (ANDS), stated that the next stage of innovation should be aimed at protecting consumers—especially nonsmokers and ex-smokers—and youth. He noted that it was the responsibility of the industry to ensure it was on the right path to responsible growth. He said that artificial intelligence (AI) could play for both the industry and regulators by helping to better analyze data concerning consumers and product use.

    “I know many companies that invested in applications to link [AI] to the device to tell the consumer how many puffs they took, what’s the health risk. All these apps failed. I don’t see consumers really using it, to be realistic,” said Maayta. “It will help consumers to get more data. It will help companies and factories [know where] to locate and know how to get the right product for the consumers through using that engine but also externally for the regulators and policymakers to get data about these products. It might help in tracking as well, track and trace for the product.”

    When it comes to eco-friendly products, Maayta claimed that a rational vision of environmental sustainability involves four distinct pillars. The first pillar is the product. Manufacturers should use the right elements … cardboard, biodegradable silicon and biodegradable plastics. The second pillar is showing that your claims of eco-friendliness are provable—that they can be substantiated.

    “If you want to claim that your product is recoverable and recyclable, and your product can be recycled to 99 percent, whatever—you [had] better be careful. You are in a very controversial industry, and every word will be tracked,” he said. “You better [be able] to substantiate every word, every percentage, everything you say about the recyclability and the probability of the product.”

    The third pillar is that if you market an eco-friendly product, you need to have a program to support recycling. The collection of these products is important. “Make it simple … because consumers need simplicity,” he said. “You used to have a cigarette and a lighter. That’s it. You are giving them an electronic device. They don’t want to have a headache there.”

    The fourth element is regulation. Maayta said regulators should be involved in investing in approving sustainable products and possibly incentivizing recycling programs. He criticized manufacturers that aggressively market products that appeal to youth. He criticized regulators for not doing more to remove the “bad players” from the market because it’s leading to good manufacturers being replaced by the black market.

    Cherry Pan, managing director of consumer and marketplace insights at Altria, said that as the industry moves toward more “eco-friendly” products, the term needs to be better defined. Pan said that the environment should be a concern for all manufacturers. She also suggested that manufacturers could play a more innovative role in the design of eco-friendly products.

    “First, how to define eco-friendly … that means you’re 100 percent recycled or 50 percent recycled or 30 percent? …. Or does it mean that we use vaping products that are less harmful than cigarettes? This also means it’s eco-friendly,” Pan explained. “We will make about 150 to 200 new products every year [not necessarily that make it to market] with our army engineers. We have about 150 engineers. So we also must make products which we [consider] eco-friendly because we can recycle it, maybe 70 [percent] to 80 percent. We use some degradable materials. The percentage we use is higher [than many other products]. We want to make removable batteries.”

    Ryan Selby, CEO of Generative AI Solutions and executive chairman at The Modern Nicotine Co., said that innovation will not bring about a one-size-fits-all solution for consumers. It’s going to take a comprehensive approach to create choices for consumers through innovation. However, he doesn’t know what the next best thing is.

    “I do think we need to keep our eyes on the future and look at there’s some big changes coming down in terms of the virtual and augmented reality experiences,” Selby said. “In the oral space, looking at opportunities for creating more personal nicotine experiences that have a lower [third-party] impact as well as lower the impact on the environment.”

    Selby also said that AI could be beneficial in providing consumer insight and in helping find innovative ways to restrict youth access. He said AI can aid the nicotine industry by helping to reduce harm by analyzing data. Regulators may even be better able to understand the consumer experience.

    “I think this is a tremendous opportunity for AI in this space to help feed in massive amounts of data set and tease out some of these interactions between devices … looking at opportunities for combining substances and devices in a way that can reduce the harms associated with [use],” said Selby. “I think there is tremendous promise with large data sets and the ability of AI to tease out some hidden secrets in there that can help us to continue moving in the right direction.”

  • GTNF 2023 Sessions

    GTNF 2023 Sessions

    PMI Launches Airport-Exclusive IQOS

    PMI debuted the brand in Japan, and has since expanded to selected airports across Europe, as well as South Korea, Morocco, Lebanon, Malaysia, and more.

  • Bonus Content: Rob Burton

    Bonus Content: Rob Burton

    In a video recording posted as part of the Bonus Content of the September Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum in Seoul, South Korea, Robert Burton, group scientific and regulatory director of the Plxsur Group, made the case for the vaping industry to comply with the highest standards of integrity—even going beyond the requirements of regulations where necessary.

    “As the world’s largest group of independent vaping companies, we at Plxsur take our responsibilities very seriously and to that end we have developed a set of standards that we feel are appropriate, not just for ourselves, but for the industry as a whole,” Burton said.

    “Our first standard is in relation to compliance. We believe that all products should be manufactured to the highest possible standards. This includes the ingredients that go into them, the packaging, and the final product in terms of how it is merchandised, distributed and consumed.

    “Our second standard is youth access prevention. Nobody under the age of 18 should get access to these products. We should only be targeting adult smokers and adult vapers. To that end, online age verification systems should be standard. In-store education of shopkeepers, people selling these products, should also be standard, and systems in place in those stores to prevent access … [by] youth, such as age verification, facial recognition systems, which are now standard in many of our stores.

    “Our third standard is recycling, and obviously this is a very hot topic at the moment, particularly relating to disposables, the single use of plastics and the battery-use regulations that are coming into many countries. We believe it is the responsibility of not just the manufacturers but of the retailers of these products to encourage consumers to recycle and to proactively encourage facilitation of that recycling with collection sites and partnerships with recycling companies.

    “Our fourth standard is responsible marketing. We believe, as with our child-protection standards, that these products should not be marketed to youth. They should be marketed to adult smokers and vapers, and that includes the way that these are packaged—so no cartoon characters, no descriptors that imply these are sweets, confectionery. And also, that should be encouraged through the retailers as well to make sure these products are not in obvious areas where youth can have access to … [them] visually; or even access to them from a purchasing point of view.

    “The final standard, standard five, relates to child protection. And this relates to protecting children from access to these products; so accidental vaping or swallowing ingredients that could potentially cause harm. Specifically, we believe that all manufacturers should look at methods to protect their devices from access … [by] children. That includes pod activation systems, child locks on the devices themselves, and also various types of packaging that prevent access .. [by] children. There is no justifiable reason why any vape system should find its way into a child’s hands.

    “One thing that we need to remember is that this industry is still new, it’s still emerging, it’s still disruptive. Regulation is still playing catch-up. And just because that regulation either doesn’t exist or is being abused doesn’t mean that we as an industry should not set the highest possible standards. We at Plxsur are doing that not just for ourselves, we believe that this is a benchmark for the whole of the industry to follow.”