Philip Morris International, the world’s biggest multinational tobacco company, is drastically misleading consumers about the amount of nicotine in its range of Iqos heated tobacco products, developed by the company as a “better” alternative to cigarettes.
In some promotional material, and to Bureau staff posing as consumers, Philip Morris International (PMI) has claimed there is 0.5mg of nicotine in each tobacco stick, but new research conducted by the Bureau has revealed the actual figure is more than eight times higher.
There are currently no international standards for testing the content of heated tobacco products, leaving a grey area for how this information is ascertained and presented to consumers.
Heated tobacco products are rapidly growing in popularity and now account for more than 2.5% of sales of all tobacco products across the EU. These devices heat disposable sticks without burning them and are distinct from vapes or e-cigarettes, which usually contain nicotine but not tobacco. PMI estimated last year that its heated tobacco range has about 20 million users.
The Bureau’s tests – which were carried out by Unisanté, a university centre for general medicine and public health in Switzerland and analysed by Force Technology in Denmark – reveal that there is 4.1mg of nicotine in each disposable tobacco stick. Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs in the world alongside heroin and cocaine, and is what gets people hooked on tobacco, which kills more than 8 million people every year.
PMI’s 0.5mg figure appears to be derived from its own modified version of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) testing regime. The ISO regime measures the nicotine in a cigarette’s emissions – what you breathe in – which tends to be substantially lower than the total nicotine a cigarette contains.
Yet even if the 0.5mg figure was meant to refer to the stick’s emissions, the Bureau’s testing found that each stick releases more than double this: 1.2mg. When approached by the Bureau, PMI said that it had found a similar figure from its own “intense smoking” test regime – but we could not find any evidence that it has ever used this figure in any public communications.
PMI accused the Bureau of conflating nicotine emissions and nicotine content. It added that its own testing had found up to 4.6mg of total nicotine per stick and that the sticks “are considered to be as addictive as cigarettes”.
It also said the nicotine content of both heated tobacco sticks and cigarettes “is of low relevance to consumers”, pointing out the differences between nicotine content, emissions and exposure (the amount absorbed by the user).
But without any clear universal regulation as to which figure should be used and how it should be described, consumers will continue to be misled.
Laura Margottini and Matthew Chapman – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – 2022-08-28.
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