Business Wire

Prohibition at Any Cost? Philip Morris International Hits Back at Global Campaign of Disinformation

Share

Statement by Dr. Moira Gilchrist BSc (Hons) Pharmacy, PhD Pharmaceutical Sciences, Vice President Strategic & Scientific Communication, Philip Morris International:

“‘You should develop a safer product.’ For decades, that is what governments and the public health community have told the tobacco industry. PMI has invested billions of dollars in science and technology to achieve that precise objective.

“A campaign coordinated by American special interest groups, all of whom are seemingly funded by the same source—Bloomberg Philanthropies—are dedicated to just one mission. Under the guise of promoting public health, they are working to rob adults who smoke of their right to choose scientifically substantiated better alternatives to continued smoking. We have a question for them: Why are they using an elaborate network of organizations to deceive adults who smoke, elected officials, and the public health community? We can only conclude that they are pursuing a disastrous prohibition-only crusade. We urge these groups to: STOP ignoring the rights of hundreds of millions of adults who smoke and who deserve better alternatives; STOP ignoring science and evidence that doesn’t fit with their dogma; and START having a real conversation.

“This dangerous and misguided campaign has provided grants to media for journalism that many people believe is independent. Ultimately, this undermines the goal of harm reduction and confuses adults who smoke about better choices. And ironically, the campaign attacks the only company that has publicly committed to eliminate cigarettes.

“If people who smoke are denied accurate information—or worse yet, are deceived—about less harmful alternatives, the vast majority will simply continue to smoke cigarettes.

“To set the record straight we have addressed all of the allegations made against us by this global campaign on our website: PMI.com. We invite everyone to learn the facts, study our science and arrive at their own conclusions. We have nothing to hide.”

Background

We are moving as fast as we can, but more importantly adults who smoke are voting with their feet and switching as fast as they can.

We have been clear about our objective to end cigarette sales. This is the future of our company; for PMI there is no turning back. We have the determination to make it work.

The proof is in the numbers:

  • Smoke-free products are now almost a fifth of our business—up from zero five years ago
  • Since 2008, we have invested $7.2 billion to develop and scientifically substantiate smoke-free alternatives
  • Nearly 10 million adults have completely stopped smoking cigarettes and switched to our electrically heated tobacco system, which is now available in 52 markets
  • Whilst cessation is clearly the best option, our market research across many countries indicates that 80% of adults who smoke want better alternatives
  • In 2019, 71 percent of our commercial spend was dedicated to smoke-free products

These facts are the real story.

The question for our critics is this: do they want to make our transformation away from cigarettes slower or faster? Do they want it to make it more difficult for adults who would otherwise continue smoking to choose better products, or less difficult?

Philip Morris International: Delivering a Smoke-Free Future

Philip Morris International (PMI) is leading a transformation in the tobacco industry to create a smoke-free future and ultimately replace cigarettes with smoke-free products to the benefit of adults who would otherwise continue to smoke, society, the company and its shareholders. PMI is a leading international tobacco company engaged in the manufacture and sale of cigarettes, as well as smoke-free products and associated electronic devices and accessories, and other nicotine-containing products in markets outside the United States. In addition, PMI ships a version of its IQOS Platform 1 device and its consumables authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to Altria Group, Inc. for sale in the United States under license. PMI is building a future on a new category of smoke-free products that, while not risk-free, are a much better choice than continuing to smoke. Through multidisciplinary capabilities in product development, state-of-the-art facilities and scientific substantiation, PMI aims to ensure that its smoke-free products meet adult consumer preferences and rigorous regulatory requirements. PMI's smoke-free IQOS product portfolio includes heat-not-burn and nicotine-containing vapor products. As of December 31, 2019, PMI estimates that approximately 9.7 million adult smokers around the world have already stopped smoking and switched to PMI's heat-not-burn product, available for sale in 52 markets in key cities or nationwide under the IQOS brand. For more information, please visit www.pmi.com and www.pmiscience.com.

# # #

To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.

Contact information

David Fraser
Philip Morris International
T. +41 (0)58 242 4500
E. David.Fraser@pmi.com

About Business Wire

For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

NetApp Empowers Customers to Securely “Talk to Their Data” in Collaboration with NVIDIA19.3.2024 01:00:00 EET | Press release

NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced it is collaborating with NVIDIA to advance retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for generative AI applications. The new collaboration directly connects the just-announced NVIDIA NeMo Retriever microservices—coming to the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform for development and deployment of production-grade AI applications, including generative AI—to exabytes of data on NetApp’s intelligent data infrastructure. Every NetApp ONTAP® customer will now be able to seamlessly “talk to their data” to access proprietary business insights without having to compromise the security or privacy of their data. Enterprises want to leverage publicly available large language models to talk directly and securely to their corporate data with assurance that their private data will never be accessible outside the enterprise. Until now, enterprises that wanted to build internal chatbots, co-pilots, and applications that leverage corporate knowledge were faced with co

KPMG’s "Digital Gateway for Tax" Platform Raises Global Standards in Tax Functionality with Generative AI18.3.2024 20:38:00 EET | Press release

In a landmark move, KPMG has enhanced the capabilities of its Digital Gateway for Tax incorporating generative AI (genAI) as an independent component to communicate directly with data, enabling powerful insights and enhanced levels of efficiency. This pioneering Software as a Service (SaaS) is designed to provide an end-to-end solution for all members of the tax department and marks a significant milestone in tax technology, integrating generative AI for organizations embarking on their tax digital transformation journey. The KPMG Digital Gateway for Tax platform’s real strength lies in its content and transparent data enrichment capabilities. The solution empowers clients to use the Digital Gateway as their Centralized Knowledge Hub, where users can access company-specific documents through the unified genAI platform. The RAG approach (Retrieval Augmented Generation) is relied upon to effortlessly enrich models with additional content which helps ensure the information used to generat

Media invitation: World leaders must make headway for adaptation - there are no alternatives18.3.2024 20:06:00 EET | Press release

A coalition of international climate organizations will come together for an event in Copenhagen on the 20 March 2024 to deliver recommendations on integrating climate and development for climate finance to world leaders, ahead of a year of intense negotiations, starting at the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240318208761/en/ Photo: Mathilde Utzon The year 2024 is of paramount importance for our future. We face an urgent need to handle the climate crisis, within the broader range of Sustainable Development Goals. This year’s high-level meetings leading up to COP29 will focus on climate finance, aiming to address the substantial funding gaps. To kick-start these discussions DanChurchAid, E3G, the International Institute for Environment and Development, CONCITO, NDC Partnerships, and the UN Foundation are coming together to co-host the virtual and in-person event ‘Integrating Clim

Verimatrix Releases Counterspy as a New Anti-Piracy Solution with First-Ever Defensive Capabilities18.3.2024 19:45:00 EET | Press release

Regulatory News: Verimatrix, (Euronext Paris: VMX), the leader in powering the modern connected world with people-centered security, today announced general availability of its new Verimatrix Counterspy anti-piracy solution -- the most advanced anti-piracy technology seen in the past decade. Counterspy leverages technology first developed by the company's cybersecurity team back in 2021 to offer an innovative new way to counter the rise in video piracy in an era where streaming apps are prevalent. Counterspy is a standalone product within Verimatrix's anti-piracy team, engineered to prevent video content theft, shield apps from attack, and provide ongoing piracy threat prediction, detection and response services. Counterspy goes beyond traditional methods to ensure top-tier security for media app subscribers, safeguarding content across various devices. It fills the gap in authentication created by the shift from operator-controlled set top box hardware to retail or app-based OTT clien

Centrico Spa (Gruppo Banca Sella) and Veracode Enter Deal to Help Secure the Application Development Life Cycle18.3.2024 17:42:00 EET | Press release

Centrico Spa, part of Gruppo Sella and a specialist in providing open banking systems for innovation-oriented financial institutions, has entered a collaboration with Veracode, a global leader in application security risk management. The deal will enhance the analysis, detection, and prioritization of flaws to expedite software fixes at every stage of Centrico’s application development life cycle. Modern banking and finance are exposed to a stringent and evolving landscape, not least as a result of the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and an increase in frequent and sophisticated cyberattacks. According to data collected in Veracode’s State of Software Security Report, 72 percent of financial organizations contain vulnerabilities—the lowest percentage of all sectors analyzed and an improvement from the previous year. Even so, financial organizations would benefit from increased automation and secure coding techniques to help them prevent, detect, and respond to vulnerabilities

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom
HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye