Cigarette smoking is one of humanity’s biggest killers. More people die from the effects of smoking than from any other cause. The World Health Organization estimates that smoking issues cause the annual global death of over eight million people. This compares to the 1.3 million deaths caused by traffic accidents, the 696,000 who die from heart diseases, and the 605,000 who die of cancer.
Most countries are well aware of the dangers of smoking and are adopting policies which will hopefully decrease smoking. At present, the number of smokers worldwide stands at over one billion.
Curtailing smokers who are addicted to nicotine is a very difficult task, but now technology has come to our aid. Scientific developments have created products that act as an alternative to cigarette smoking.
Mihael Solter is the new general manager Israel at Philip Morris International, one of the world’s leading cigarette producers. It is also the cigarette company that is leading the innovation that can reduce the number of smokers.
But why would a company decide to stop marketing the product that has made it so successful? “Because it is the right thing to do and because we came to the conclusion that real change in this matter could only come from within the industry,” Solter explains. “A few years ago, we caused a sensation when we announced that we intended to eventually stop selling cigarettes and were developing technologically advanced smoke-free products. This offers adult smokers an alternative to smoking who would otherwise not stop smoking. During the past decade, Philip Morris has spent over $12 billion in developing IQOS [I quit ordinary smoking] smoke-free products. These efforts were recognized by the US Food and Drug Administration when it allowed the company's heated tobacco product, IQOS, to be marketed in the US. The cartons state: ‘Scientific studies have shown that completely switching from conventional cigarettes to IQOS significantly reduces the body's exposure to harmful chemicals,’” he says.
This strategy is producing results. Today, 29 million adult smokers use Philip Morris IQOS smoke-free products, of whom 20.8 million have completely stopped smoking conventional cigarettes. Solter is proud of this achievement. He says, “We have disrupted the market to such an extent that we are slowly seeing our conventional cigarettes eliminated from the market. We are the only company within the traditional international tobacco sector committed to phasing out cigarettes altogether, and I am happy to say we are succeeding. We can now say that a smoke-free future is no longer just a vision, it is becoming a reality. From the perspective of Philip Morris, this is evident from the figures published in their Q4 2023 financial report: revenues of $9 billion, of which IQOS sales amounted to $3.6 billion, or 39.3% of total revenues. The figures for 2023 show that the revenue from the IQOS sales as a percentage of total sales is increasing. In 2023, total revenue of $35.2 billion, of which $12.8 billion was generated from IQOS revenue, or 36.0% of the total, compared to 39.3% in the whole year.”
As one can see, the global market is undergoing a transformation that will increase the overall health of mankind. But how does Israel feature in the scheme of things?
Solter explains that the launch of the IQOS ILUMA in Israel soon is one of his main tasks. “It is a very good new alternative to the use of traditional cigarettes. It is based on heating tobacco by an innovative induction system. It heats the tobacco to 350 degrees (instead of 900 degrees with conventional cigarettes). This means the tobacco does not ignite; and if it doesn’t ignite, it doesn’t create smoke – and smoke is the main cause of smoking-related diseases. The new IQOS ILUMA device is filled with a tobacco aerosol. Like previous IQOS devices, the ILUMA emits, on average, 95% lower levels of harmful chemicals compared to the emissions of conventional cigarettes. This does not mean that the product is totally risk-free, but it is a great improvement, with greatly increased reduced exposure to harmful emissions.”
But how is Israel confronting the need to reduce smoking?
According to the Ministry of Health’s latest annual report on smoking, 20% of adults in Israel smoke; and despite vigorous national campaigns to discourage smoking, such as restrictions to smoking in public places, advertising bans, health warnings on packaging, and higher taxation rates, the percentage of adult smokers in Israel has remained unchanged for over a decade. Solter will have to tackle this problem if he wants to succeed in increasing IQOS sales in Israel and thereby reduce the number of smokers in this country.
He says, “The fact that smoking rates in Israel have been stagnant for over a decade means that the harm reduction approach is unlikely to reduce smoking numbers unless additional measures are adapted. There are quite a few countries that initially adopted the harm reduction approach, updated their regulatory policies, and succeeded in greatly reducing smoking. I believe that this can also be done in Israel.”
The harm reduction approach considers smoke-free alternatives such as heated tobacco products, e-cigarettes, and nicotine pouches. While not risk-free, they are considered by many countries to be a better alternative than continuing to smoke cigarettes. Sweden is one of the most prominent countries leading this trend. Smoking fell from 15.0% of the adult population to 5.0%. In the UK, it dropped from 30.0% to 13%.
Another example of what can be done is the policy of the NHS in the UK, which encourages the transition of adult smokers to alternatives that reduce the number of smokers by some 20,000 a year. Currently, Israel is taking the "quit or die" approach which means either quit smoking or die from the results of smoking and no regulatory differentiation between smoke-free products and cigarettes. Access to smoke-free alternatives is rather limited with no real incentive stop using conventional cigarettes and switching to non-smoke products. This, according to Solter, explains why the number of smokers in Israel is not falling.
“Allow me to quote Jacek Olczak , CEO of Philip Morris International in saying , “Cigarettes belong to museums and his appeal to government to adapt their anti-smoking developments accelerate the process of consigning to the history books . There are countries that have already doner so. Israel can too.”