Philip Morris CEO in an interview: “Total ban on smoking, starting from the United Kingdom”. The intent of the “healthy” turning point: to promote electronic cigarettes more and more
A world without cigarettes, in which it is “Smoking problem solved”; starting with the United Kingdom, where the hope is that of a “total ban” by 2030. This is probably what most doctors hope: smoking, active and passive, causes WHO of 8 million of deaths a year. To express this desire, however, is Jacek Olczak, president of the tobacco multinational Philip Morris. In an interview with the British tabloid Mail on Sunday prefigures the ‘Disappearance’ from the shelves of UK tobacconists of the company’s main brand, Marlboro. The same will happen in other countries, where people smoke less and less due to an increased awareness of the damage and increasingly stringent bans.
That Marlboros distributors want to see “cigarettes disappear” is consistent with that reckless change of image that the company has been pursuing since May, with the arrival at the management of the Polish Olczak, opposed to smoking. On 21 July, for example, the company’s decision to buy the Vectura company, which produces inhalers against asthma, for $ 1.4 billion.
It is also an obligatory choice: like the lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret, after having lost 15% in five years, now declares itself a “feminist”, the shares of Philip Morris have depreciated by 3% when, in recent days, the company presented its second quarter results to investors. Moreover, more and more shareholders refuse to invest in tobacco, even if it is profitable: among them the Dutch investment bank Abn Amro, whose consultant Ruben Zandvliet has defined the purchase of Vectura “The most cynical move I could imagine.” In 1965, also stimulated by the iconic “Marlboro Man”, 43% of Americans smoked; today it’s 14%. The cigarette market, Olczak admitted, “like that of petrol cars,” is running out.
The alternatives are more profitable: inhalers, vaporizers, electronic cigarettes. Philip Morris produces, for example, a device that heats tobacco: it has already sold 20 million. The plan announced in February is that by 2025, 50% of revenue will come from smokeless products (now it is 25%), and at least $ 1 billion, by 2025, from nicotine-free products; the aim is even “to become a wellness and health company”. “We need to give the public alternatives to smoking: with the right bans, some countries can do it in less than 10 years,” said Olczak. The anti-smoking think-tank “Truth Initiative” is less optimistic: 70 percent of Americans, according to one of their polls, “do not trust” the producers of tobacco and electronic cigarettes.
Philip Morris’s “health twist” – while other manufacturers such as Imperial, which produces the Winstons, are divesting vaporizers to return to promoting smoking, and Altria itself, which distributes Marlboros in the US, is more traditional – is pointed to by activists as hypocritical and interested. That Philip Morris invests in the production of anti-asthma devices, for example, is a conflict of interest: asthma is also caused by smoking. Then, it does not seem sustainable: “When all smokers have converted to the alternatives,” asks the British anti-smoking lobbyist Deborah Arnott, “how will they convince others to start?”. One of the possible answers is the legal cannabis market, which is increasingly cleared of customs while tobacco smoking is less and less.
July 25, 2021 (change July 25, 2021 | 21:44)
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