Let’s Talk with Gizelle

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Music starts.

Interviewer asks:

Nicotine in these products is what causes cancer?

Gizelle Baker, Vice President External Scientific Affairs, Philip Morris International (PMI) says: 

That's factually and scientifically incorrect.

Interviewer says: 

But can you categorically say then that these products

are better than a cigarette? 

Gizelle Baker says:

Absolutely.

Interviewer says:

Can you tell me the top three misconceptions 

that you hear all the time about nicotine pouches?

Gizelle Baker says:

One: It's about the nicotine content

or how much nicotine is in a pouch. 

You hear 1 pouch is equal to 4 or 5

or even upwards of 10 cigarettes.

Two: would have to be that nicotine

pouches must cause cancer or do cause cancer. 

And three would be more about regulators

who let cigarettes be sold as consumer products,

but are banning nicotine pouches to protect health.

Interviewer asks: 

That's quite a shocking statement

that you made straight off there as number one.

Can you tell me exactly how much nicotine there is in a nicotine

pouch, particularly when compared to cigarettes in this case? 

Gizelle Baker says:

Well, there's a range because nicotine pouches

are really a category or a group of products.

And even the products we sell, we have some 

that are around 3mg to about 12mg, but they go up to about 20,

when you think about the regular, everyday nicotine pouches in a store.

But you also see things that are being sold online

with 100mg or 150mg, which is way too high and 

I think this is where regulators have a role to play of setting limits

to ensure that you don't have toxic levels of nicotine,

but do deliver nicotine in a way that consumers

will actually give up cigarettes. 

Interviewer says:

So, where is that difference, then, between the nicotine

in a nicotine pouch and the nicotine in a cigarette?

Gizelle Baker says: 

The amount of nicotine in the tobacco of a cigarette

is probably in the range of 10 to 14mg.

So very similar.

But when you smoke a cigarette, 

light it on fire and the smoke comes through, it delivers

about 1mg of nicotine.

That's where you get that confusion.

1mg comes out of a cigarette in the smoke, 

compared to 10mg in the pouch.

But when you talk about what a person is exposed to,

which is really what's going to drive any risk

that's going to come down on a pouch to how long that pouch 

stays in somebody's mouth will determine

how much of that 10mg in the pouch

will actually be extracted from the pouch.

It's not going to be 100%. 

Interviewer asks:

When it comes to exposure, though

one of the scary facts that people talk about all the time

is that nicotine in these products is what causes cancer. 

Gizelle Baker replies:

Well, that's a understandable confusion,

but also a wrong conclusion.

Many people think about smoking 

and they automatically connect it to nicotine, so people think,

well smoking delivers nicotine,

so it must be the nicotine that causes the cancer.

I can understand why. But that's factually and scientifically incorrect. 

We know from the International Agency of Research on Cancer

the world-leading experts on cancer.

They looked at tobacco and tobacco smoke, and they came up

with a list of the compounds in it that cause cancer  

and nicotine did not make that list.

So, we know it's not causing cancer.

Interviewer asks:

But ultimately, while we say that there's nicotine in these pouches, 

there are other components in these pouches, too.

What is in a nicotine pouch?

Gizelle Baker replies:

A nicotine pouch is really like a tea bag, 

a pouch that in it has pharma-grade nicotine

so, nicotine extracted from a tobacco leaf

and then purified to a pharma-grade,

similar to what's in a nicotine replacement therapy. 

And then you mix that with fillers and binders, things to make

the product stable, together with flavors and sweeteners,

which are what a person tastes

and therefore provide a satisfying experience to a user. 

Interviewer asks:

But you do hear some absolute horror stories about what

is actually in these products.

You hear things like glass, arsenic. 

Gizelle Baker replies:

Well, you're going to hear a lot of variety of stories.

Some of it is going to be hype and some may be other products

that are not ours and are not processed 

or manufactured at the same level of quality that we can do.

So, I can speak about ZYN our product.

I can categorically say we have assessed it

and there's not arsenic in our product. 

and our products are not going to have glass put in

for whatever reason people might think that that exists.

Interviewer says:

But let's look at it from a different point of view, then. 

If nicotine is causing all these concerns for people,

why not just create a pouch that has no nicotine in it?

Gizelle Baker says:

I guess on a technical level, could you sell one? Yes. 

But if you think about who these products are for and why

they're using these products, you have to deliver what

the consumer is trying to purchase.

So, we know from cigarettes that many smokers 

smoke for the nicotine, but the harm of the smoking is

caused by all the other chemicals

that come together with the nicotine in the smoke

when you burn tobacco. 

So, if we really want them to give up those cigarettes,

which will have a benefit for public health,

then you have to give them the nicotine,

the substance they're looking for; 

but remove or lower the harmful chemicals

that come with it so we can reduce

the harm of the behavior itself.

Interviewer says: 

But can you categorically say then that these products are better than a cigarette?

Gizelle Baker says:

Absolutely. This is an easy one, because when you look at a cigarette,

you've got the burning of the tobacco that's generating 

more than 6,000 chemicals.

So, together with that nicotine comes 6,000 chemicals,

of which almost a hundred of them are known to be harmful and cause

smoking-related diseases. 

When you look at a nicotine pouch,

You're actually extracting the nicotine from the tobacco

and purifying it and putting it in there so, their levels of exposure are

going to be significantly lower because if you don't put it in the pouch, 

they're not going to be exposed to it.

Then if you take the second look and say, well, what do we know?

These products are very similar to snus.

Snus is also a pouch-type product, except for it 

has the actual tobacco still in the product,

and it's been available in Sweden for the better part of a century.

With decades of epidemiological data

we know, and the FDA in the USA, actually, 

when they authorized snus as a modified risk tobacco product,

they allowed us to communicate with consumers that switching

from cigarettes to snus would reduce their risk of oral cancer,

lung cancer, heart disease, stroke and chronic bronchitis 

and emphysema.

and then you think about ZYN, our nicotine pouch product.

When it was authorized for sale in that exact same country,

they looked at the evidence on that, compared it to 

cigarettes, compared it to snus, and they came to the conclusion

that snus would be the highest or the higher limit of what

you can expect from ZYN. So, we know that

cigarettes are by far the most harmful, 

snus is significantly less harmful,

and nicotine pouches are even less harmful than that, where at worst

they're exactly the same as snus.

Interviewer says: 

But one of the issues that we have

is that these products are still really relatively new to the market.

So, how can you genuinely know

what the long-term effects are going to be? 

Gizelle Baker says:

Well, I think the long-term effects

are going to take long term to generate that data,

but that's why it's important to have those comparators, and know 

maybe you won't be able to put a number on it

and an error bar on it, because I have a statistician.

But what you will be able to do is understand where on the continuum of risk

these products sit. 

And that's really what's important.

And then you put monitoring and post-market-type surveillance

in place to understand and ensure you're able to deliver

on that prediction. 

Interviewer says:

Let's look at the way that these products are marketed, though,

because that is a concerning issue for people.

These products are seen to be glamorized. 

In fact, people could say that Philip Morris is just going back

to the old days of traditional tobacco marketing

when it comes to these products.

Gizelle Baker says: 

Well, I think we should first take a step back and look at what

people's complaints are.

I understand, and there is a concern.

We absolutely do not want people seeing these 

things in a glamorous way.

And therefore you need to

make sure that you're marketing these things responsibly.

Who gets access to the marketing? 

Limiting access to the product itself.

Making sure you have proper age verification and access prevention-type

things in place to make sure that these products make it

into the hands of adults who smoke, 

and we need to get people away from cigarettes as fast as possible and as many

away from cigarettes as possible.

So in order to do that and when you think about how you're

going to do that, behavioral change on that scale, you need to first look at 

what are the things that people like about smoking?

How can we deliver that but with lower amounts of harm?

So, smoking is a very social behavior.

We're trying to create a social human experience 

for people who are seeking that, where they get to try the product,

become aware of it, and hopefully

make a successful switch away from cigarettes in an environment

that supports them in doing so. 

And then you layer on top of that, who do we not want to see these.

We do not want underage people being part of that experience.

So, you put age gates in place.

You send your invites to adult smokers or adult nicotine users. 

We need to support the people who are smoking or would otherwise

continue to smoke to make this change,

which we know is difficult, and to be able to succeed at it.

Philip Morris International logo appears on screen. 

The words a global smoke-free champion appears on screen.

Music ends.