PMI CEO Says Cigarettes May be Obsolete Within a Decade

Philip Morris International CEO Andre Calantzopoulos, said that as smokers become more and more health conscious and start switching to safer alternatives, cigarette sales in some markets may become obsolete within 10 to 15 years.

Diane Caruana

August 8, 2020

“I am convinced it is possible to completely end cigarette sales in many countries within 10 to 15 years,” said chief executive Andre Calantzopoulos, in a sustainability report published last month. He added that the help of regulators is needed in order for this to become a reality.

PMI already gets almost a fifth of its revenue from non-combustible products, such as its heated-tobacco device, iQOS.

The maker of Marlboro has long been saying that the company’s goal is achieving a “smoke-free future,” and has now started giving a concrete timeline. The company already gets almost a fifth of its revenue from non-combustible products, such as its heated-tobacco device, iQOS.

In discussing studies looking at the relative risks of HnB products, renowned public health and anti-smoking expert Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos, has long been pointing out that scientific data keeps indicating that the products are significantly safer than regular cigarettes.

iQOS market expansion

PMI has posted a 44.2% increase in iQOS shipments, to 59.7bn units, with a 40.7% rise to 17.1bn units in the last quarter of 2019. Excluding the US, the tobacco giant has witnessed a market share increase in IQOS markets by 1.4 percentage points to 5%. At the end of 2019, it was calculated that there were a total of 13.6m IQOS users, of whom 9.7m were former smokers who had switched to the safer alternative.