Imperial Brands believes the creation of supportive regulatory environments that foster the adoption of smokeless products by adult nicotine consumers can help deliver tangible public health wins. Here's how...
Innovating, manufacturing, and scientifically substantiating smokeless products are just three ingredients in the broader recipe for improved global public health. Another crucial ingredient is supportive, consumer-friendly regulatory environments that encourage their uptake by significant numbers of adult smokers.
What does ‘good’ smokeless product regulation look like?
To achieve better public health outcomes, we believe legislation and regulation clearly need to be driven by quality science and robust data, not emotion or ideology.
The THR equation provides the ideal consumer-centric approach to help shape a positive regulatory framework for smokeless alternatives to cigarettes.
Legislation that considers and supports the elements in the THR equation can maximise the ensuing positive public health impact. These include:
Creating innovative
and satisfying smokeless products.
Scientifically
substantiating the
harm reduction potential of
smokeless products through robust, peer-reviewed
science.
Ensuring high product
standards to build
confidence among
regulators, public health,
and consumers.
Combating smokeless product
misperceptions through
responsible education,
marketing, and
communications to raise
awareness among key
stakeholders and encourage
adult smoker switching.
Advocating for robust and
consistent enforcement
to help ensure product
compliance, minimise the
illicit trade, and prevent
unintended use of smokeless products.
What about ‘bad’ smokeless product regulation?
Unsurprisingly, it contradicts all of the previously outlined.
Naïve regulation often incorrectly considers THR as a threat to traditional tobacco control measures, rather than embracing its potential as a complementary measure.
The results of this approach can include prohibition-style approaches which fuel black markets, increases in smokeless product misperceptions that inhibit adult smoker switching and drive former smokers back to cigarettes, and the proliferation of irresponsible actors who further damage perceptions of smokeless categories.
It’s clear that offering smokeless alternatives to cigarettes with the potential to help facilitate THR comes with a serious societal responsibility.
But does any regulatory framework currently exist that creates a truly level playing field for responsible NGP manufacturers?
For instance, Imperial Brands has an extremely robust set of internal standards – including our scientific assessment framework and global marketing standards, to help safeguard our consumers.
We also monitor compliance and regularly engage with regulators to advocate for stronger enforcement of category-specific regulations.
Yet these high standards are far from universal. This has resulted in enduring compliance issues, ever-increasing rises in illicit products, plus disruptive issues with youth vaping even in more mature smokeless product markets – let alone emerging ones.
Compliance – or rather non-compliance – is a particularly concerning, and growing, issue when it comes to smokeless categories. Are appropriate product standards and responsible retailing being enforced strictly enough, even in traditionally pro-THR countries?
We’d argue that in most cases, they’re not – and this is bad news for public health, consumers, and the broader
reputation of smokeless products.
Imperial Brands believes that fostering positive relationships between industry and regulators is the right path forward.
This means manufacturers must strive to continue to act with integrity when it comes to product design, transparent science, and responsible marketing. In this way, we become an important part of the solution rather than being perceived (by some) as the root of the problem.
The prize is potentially healthier futures for a billion-plus adult smokers and a meaningful contribution to global public health.
