Tobacco giant sticks up for ‘safer’ option

Smoking giant Philip Morris wants to introduce a new tobacco product in Australia: heated ‘sticks’ it claims are less toxic than cigarettes.

Smoking giant Philip Morris wants to introduce a new tobacco product in Australia: heated “sticks” it claims are an alternative to vaping and smoking that “produce fewer and/or lower ­levels of toxic chemicals than ­cigarettes”.

The heated tobacco products are legal in the US, the UK and other countries including New Zealand and Japan. The Therapeutic Goods Administration will decide if they can be sold here.

Health Minister Greg Hunt has previously made it clear he does not support alternative tobacco products. In 2018 he bowed to pressure from colleagues to commission research into the potential health benefits of vaping.

The results of that research are due in 2020.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Mr Hunt said the minister’s views on heated tobacco and vaping were well known.

 “In addition, the warnings against e-cigarette use from Australia’s most senior medical officials could not be stronger,” the spokesman said. “Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy, along with state and territory chief medical officers, recently issued clear and categorical advice that people should refrain from using e-­cigarettes and vaping.”

The US Food and Drug Administration recently outlined an epidemic of addiction relating to vaping, the spokesman said.

The tobacco in a standard cigarette burns at more than 600C, generating smoke. The heated tobacco sticks are placed in a holder that heats them to about 350C. There is no fire, ash or smoke, according to a website that describes Philip Morris’s version of the heated tobacco sticks.

In Australia, smoking is the leading cause of preventable death. Almost three million of us smoke. An Australian Medical Association spokeswoman said the AMA was against tobacco products “as a blanket rule”.