Gotta love Philip Morris.
Hardly a week goes by without some new announcement or initiative designed to bolster the idea that smoking is about to be consigned to history.
Today the company that wants to stop selling cigarettes in England by 2030 - the year Public Health England also hopes England will be ‘smoke free’ with fewer than five per cent of the population smoking - has released research that claims that one city, Bristol, could have ZERO smokers in just six years.
It’s nonsense, of course.
Nevertheless, according to the Daily Mail:
The research is based on a current smoking rate of 11.14 per cent of people in Bristol. The number of smokers in Bristol fell by 9.95 percentage points between 2011 and 2017, so the figure is based on current trends continuing.
Assuming that current trends will continue is hugely problematic, of course, and probably unrealistic.
After all, while there was a significant fall in smoking rates between 2012 and 2016 it just happened to coincide with a sharp increase in the number of smokers switching to e-cigarettes.
But that seems to have stalled with the number of people who vape falling from a peak of 2.9m to 2.8m (according to the latest figures).
Also, if the option of e-cigarettes combined with the smoking ban, display ban, plain packaging and punitive taxation haven’t persuaded almost one in six adults to quit, it’s hard to see that figure dropping below five or even ten per cent any time soon.
Indeed, according to the same research, at current rates the country as a whole won’t kick the habit until 2050.
Anyway, I look forward to hearing what Peter Nixon, MD of Philip Morris UK, has to say at the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum that begins in London tonight and continues on Wednesday and Thursday.
He’s one of the keynote speakers and I hope he will repeat his company’s commitment to stop selling cigarettes in the UK within 12 years.
The announcement attracted a lot of headlines but, as someone pointed out to me the other day, it’s hardly very brave to announce that your company intends to stop selling cigarettes in a country in which your market share is a fraction of your competitors who have far more to lose.
A declaration that PMI would like to stop selling cigarettes within twelve years in regions where they are market leaders for combustible tobacco would be far more impressive but I doubt if that will happen.
Meanwhile I will continue my search for someone who uses iQOS, the heat-not-burn device that Philip Morris wants smokers to use instead of combustible cigarettes.
As readers know, based on consumer feedback I’m favourably impressed with iQOS. However, it’s almost impossible to find anyone who uses it in the UK. Believe me, I’ve tried.
A few weeks ago I even contacted PM to ask if they could suggest one or two people in the Westminster village who use the product and they couldn’t come up with a single name!
(I’m aware, btw, that Mark Littlewood, director-general of the IEA, is an occasional user of iQOS, but he’s unavailable for the event we’ll be announcing shortly).
Frankly, this doesn’t bode well if Philip Morris wants every smoker in England to quit or switch to iQOS within the next 12 years.
If ‘current trends’ continue they may have to revise that target.