Heated tobacco, the industry’s false good solution

What is heated tobacco?

Concretely, these are mini-cigarettes containing a filter and tobacco. These must be inserted into a device heating the tobacco to around 350°, releasing an aerosol to be inhaled. The combustion observed with classic cigarettes is replaced here by an incomplete combustion, a pyrolysis^[1].

A marketing recycling

The tobacco industry's marketing strategy remains the same: to minimize the risks of the product on the user's health. By claiming that there is no combustion, the tobacco industry claims to reduce the harmfulness of their product by 90 to 95%.

This argument is a way to make a fresh impression on public opinion and decision-makers. Tobacco manufacturers now present themselves as actors committed to health^[2], in particular by investing heavily in social networks, the press and television. This strategy very quickly had the expected effects: in Japan, for example, the strong presence of the IQOS brand in the media was accompanied by a sharp increase in its consumption.^[3].

More generally, heated tobacco seems to be the Trojan horse of the tobacco industry, whose ambition is threefold: to attract young consumers, to counter the decline in the social acceptability of smoking, and to undermine the efforts undertaken for several years by the public authorities against cigarettes.^[4].

Harmfulness of the product

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no evidence that these products " are less harmful than conventional tobacco products^[5] "On the contrary, a series of studies tend to demonstrate that this new process induces in particular pulmonary and carcinogenic risks.^[6].

The incomplete combustion of heated tobacco is also a problem. According to the Letter of the French-speaking Society of Tobacco (SFT), "the more incomplete the combustion, the more toxic emissions it produces^[7] ".

Above all, this product, containing nicotine, is in no way a solution to quitting smoking, but rather a roundabout way for the tobacco industry to maintain a situation of dependency between itself and its consumers.

©Generation Without Tobacco