Stakeholder collaboration: charting a path to make cigarettes obsolete

Such a roadmap should consist of a set of complementary supply and demand measures that can help make cigarettes obsolete:

– Increased investment in prevention, quitting campaigns, and cessation services, with a particular focus on populations that are more vulnerable and significantly overrepresented in smoking statistics

– Measures to rectify misunderstandings that prevent those who do not quit smoking from switching to better alternatives, including:

• The leading role of combustion in the development of smoking-related diseases must be clarified to address adult smokers’ confusion
• The big misunderstandings about the effects of nicotine alone, distinct from the serious harm caused by smoking must be rectified (read more about Nicotine Science here)

– Access to a range of smoke-free alternatives which are subject to differentiated regulation and taxation compared with combustible tobacco products, coupled with robust safeguards against unintended use, in particular by underage people:

• Regulation and tax should recognize the different risk profiles and economics of smoke-free products versus the most harmful forms of consuming nicotine, such as cigarettes. In principle, the most harmful products— combustible products such as cigarettes—should be subject to the most restrictive regulation and higher taxation to discourage smoking, while comprehensive but differentiated regulation of smoke-free products should encourage adult smokers switching to less harmful alternatives to smoking
• Communication with adult smokers should be permitted only for smoke-free products
• Differentiated flavors regulation: treating combustible products most restrictively, while allowing flavored smoke-free products as long as these are effective in supporting adult smokers to switch to smoke-free products and are labelled or packaged in a way that is not particularly appealing to unintended audiences (such as underage persons)
• Differentiated labeling and product display for smoke-free products versus cigarettes that helps to communicate in a factual and evidence-based manner the differentiated risk-profile with the aim to facilitate informed consumer decision-making and switching
• Differentiated excise tax: taxing cigarettes and other combustible products much higher than smoke-free products, to incentivize adult smokers to switch to smoke free alternatives and the industry to invest in these products

– Introduce strong safeguards against unintended use, alongside robust enforcement towards all market players:

• Mandatory minimum legal age must be in place for all tobacco- and nicotine-containing products, supported by robust enforcement and meaningful penalties for noncompliance
• Measures to allow for better access control and oversight of sales, such as retail licensing where market configuration allows and strict enforcement by responsible government agencies.
• Allow communication to adult consumers subject to robust safeguards and requirements, and ban communications (such as social media content and influencers) and marketing materials that are particularly appealing to unintended audiences (such as underage people)
• Flavors should undergo stringent scrutiny to guard against unintended use (in particular among underage people, absent fully enforced controls on underage sales) and be strictly regulated, alongside flavor descriptors

– Clear product requirements, including quality, safety, and performance standards, as well as technical and scientific criteria to substantiate reduced-risk potential versus continued smoking. All coupled with robust enforcement and comprehensive measures to prevent and address illicit and noncompliant products that can jeopardize public health

– Post-market monitoring of real-world data and surveillance to assess the actual impact of policy interventions, and to allow targeted and timely policy adjustments to address new issues and ensure the policy direction is evaluated by outcomes. More specifically, such monitoring of the in-market use of smoke-free products should allow policymakers to understand how these products are used and by whom

– Countries’ smoke-free targets should be incorporated in the national plans alongside clear roadmaps toward reaching the targets. These roadmaps should include supply oriented measures that can help accelerate cigarette obsolescence—such as cap or cap and trade concepts. These market-based, supply-oriented measures on combustible products should be introduced together with providing adult smokers access to a range of well-established, acceptable, and affordable smoke-free alternatives, ensuring they are aware that these products are a better choice than continuing to smoke

– Post-phase-out support for adult smokers who will continue smoking. Those smokers who continue smoking should receive the necessary support via cessation programs or targeted awareness campaigns about the benefit of switching to less harmful alternatives if they want to continue using nicotine

Image: Customers inside of a store

We share the vision for a smoke-free world with governments that have already started to think beyond traditional tobacco control and embrace harm reduction as a critical tool to help accelerate smoking decline. When considering new policies to reduce the harm of cigarettes, it is critical that governments fully assess intended outcomes as well as unintended consequences of such policies, and ensure robust measures are in place to mitigate the latter.

To fully realize the benefits of harm reduction measures, governments must ensure there is a robust marketplace of regulated smoke-free products, facilitate clear and accurate communications regarding harm reduction and the role of nicotine, establish regulatory and tax differentiation to encourage switching to legal smoke-free alternatives, and work with industry to identify science-backed policies with clear, achievable standards.