IQOS is expanding the nicotine addiction market in Italy

Philip Morris claims that they only market IQOS to current smokers for “harm reduction” (ignoring the fact that their own evidence shows no reduction in harm in people who use them), but new data from Italy belies that claim.

In a new paper in Tobacco Control, ”Heat-not-burn tobacco products: concerns from the Italian experience,”  Xiaoqiu Liu and colleagues find that nearly half (45%) of IQOS users are never cigarette smokers and over half (51%) of people who are interested in IQOS are never smokers.

While this is bad news for public health, it is great news for Philip Morris.

Regulators around the world should take note.-

The full cite for the paper is     Liu X, Lugo A, Spizzichino L, et al.  Heat-not-burn tobacco products: concerns from the Italian experience.  Tobacco Control Published Online First: 26 January 2018. doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-054054  and it is available here.