Smoking's Shangri-La: A Cigarette With Less Risk

By 2017, Philip Morris has plans to offer a new cigarette that will pose lower health risks.

June 22, 2012

LAUSANNE, Switzerland - Philip Morris International Inc. wants to make smoking less risky, and will be debut within five years a new cigarette type that will lower health risks, Bloomberg reports. The company has three products under development for existing brands, one of which would heat tobacco rather than burn it, said Andre Calantzopoulos, COO, during a speech for an investors meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland.

"We are on the eve of what we all believe could be a paradigm shift for our industry," said CEO Louis Camilleri. He sees the new products as having "the very real potential to not only be a game-changer, but also be the key to unlock several hitherto virgin territories, most notably the huge Chinese market."

For decades, tobacco firms have sought safer alternatives to smoking tobacco. Philip Morris International is "far more advanced than I had expected," said Erik Bloomquist, a Berenberg Bank analyst.

Heated tobacco is the "most promising" of the products, and it is now ready for clinical tests. Manufacturing would commence in three to four years, said Calantzopoulos. The two other products under development include one that would use a normal lighter and another that would change the nicotine into an aerosol. "We have to remain, however, alert to the fact that there may be bumps in the road, given the many complexities of this undertaking," Calantzopoulos said.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration€™s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee indicated that dissolvable tobacco products appear to carry fewer health risks than smoking cigarettes.

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