5 minute read
When Will Smoking End in the UK?
A London Underground carriage.
Photo: naumoid/Bigstock.com
UNITED KINGDOM
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When Will Smoking End in the UK?
It looks like it will get a little nudge from PMI
By Bob Crew, TI London Correspondent
In recent months and years in Britain, Philip Morris International (PMI) has emerged as a tobacco company that has been pulling away from its traditional leaf-tobacco products.
In the United Kingdom, Philip Morris International (PMI) estimates that the UK will no longer be smoking tobacco by 2050, while some British cities and towns will be ahead of the alternative tobacco game by mid-2020!
If this sounds incredible, then read on, because PMI in London has been putting a lot of money where its mouth is to get its research right. Specifically, it predicts that the English cities and towns of Bristol, Wokingham and York will be the first parts of England to go smoke free in mid 2020s, while the rest of the country “will not go smoke free until after 2050.”
This is according to new research conducted by Frontier Economics and commissioned by PMI. However, there are stark variations in the predicted rate of decline in different parts of the country, with one in 10 areas predicted to still be smoking in 32 years’ time and nearly a quarter (23 percent) predicted to have stopped before 2030.
Frontier Economics, headquartered in London, specialized in behavioral economics with a goal of challenging and changing the conduct of business, society and governments in the near and far future. It is “tackling the big economic questions” that come with the territory of all these changes.
The company has offices throughout Continental Europe and also in Eire (Dublin).
Which way the wind is blowing
Both PMI and Frontier Economics think they can see which way the wind is blowing, so they are of course blowing with it and going with the flow to prevent their profits from going up in smoke. But will there be cross-winds and blow-backs along the way?
This is their puzzle and the expensive and risky nature of their conundrum, and only time will tell about this particular research in the UK and the towns and cities in question there (as investors and financial analysts watch with keen interest, as always).
The City of Bristol is in the West of England, and it is the first location that is expected to stop smoking tobacco, followed by Wokingham, a smaller, more countrified little town some thirty miles west of London enroute to Bristol, while York is a medium-sized ancient city in the far north of England in Yorkshire (that are both expected to stop smoking tobacco at the same time).
PMI is boldly declaring that the residents of these three locations will be the first in England (if not in the world at large) to collectively give up smoking tobacco either in favor of alternative e-cigs or of vaping, or of not smoking at all. It claims that its research has clearly “established” that these areas are set to go smoke-free the “quickest” in the following chronological order: Bristol in 2024 and Wokingham and York in 2026.
Other areas expected to still be smoking beyond 2050 include North Lincolnshire, Derby and Cheshire East, all in the North and mid-North of England.
PMI claims that its research “also highlights a variety of measures that could accelerate the decline in cigarette smokers. These include increasing the number of smokers using NHS Stop Smoking services and getting more switching to better alternatives like e-cigarettes and heated tobacco.”
It reports that these “new figures are detailed on a website launched by PMI— www.lastsmoke.co.uk—which presents data for postal code areas through an interactive tool [that] also includes a powerful call to action to encourage communities to go smoke free faster.”
This is ambitious and impressive research, for sure, and clearly, PMI really is putting its money where its mouth is, as it tries to get on the right side of the British government and the health authorities in the UK, to get ahead of the game with its alternative e-cig and vaping products.
Victory or miscalculation?
But it remains to be seen if these products turn out to be cancerous (as some are already arguing) in the fullness of time. And it also remains to be seen if PMI’s/Frontier Economics research and predictions turn out to be the biggest blunder and miscalculation in tobacco industry history anywhere in the world, or otherwise the most far-sighted and accurate.
So, PMI is taking a big gamble here, obviously for good public relations and marketing purposes. But that may or may not blow up in its face, as it becomes the first tobacco company in the world to campaign against its own and its industry’s products.
PMI’s commitment
Mark MacGregor, UK Corporate Affairs Director of PMI, has declared that the company is committed to going smoke free as fast as possible and ultimately stopping selling cigarettes altogether.
“What this research reveals are the huge variations in the decline in smoking in different parts of the country,” he says. “We want to play our part in working with local businesses, retailers and councils in the areas with highest smoking rates.”
It is not going to be easy getting smokers in these areas to stop, he admits. “One of the keys to success will be ensuring they understand that there are more alternative options than ever that can help them give up cigarettes for good.” We can see his company and Frontier Economics has been working hard at getting its sums and predictions as right as they can!
The company reports that its market research findings include the following about the behavioral smoking habits and economics in the different regions of the UK:
• Regional falls in smoking rates from 2011 to 2017 varied from 10 percent to 1 percent, with one area, Cheshire East, actually seeing a rise in smoking prevalence in 2017 than six years earlier.
• Significant differences in smoking prevalence across England, with 3 percent of local authorities having a rate of over 20 percent while 4 percent have a rate of between 5 percent and 10 percent.
• Deprived areas have a higher prevalence rate of smokers. The three areas with the highest rates of smoking (Kingston upon Hull, Blackpool and North Lincolnshire) have an average rate of 22.1 percent compared to an average rate of 8.8 percent among the three lowest (Rutland, York and Wokingham).
PMI’s Last Smoke Website also includes other proposals that could accelerate the end of cigarettes in the country. These include “more independent research into smoking alternatives, targeted government campaigns through school and social media to stop smoking in the first place and tackling the trade in illicit cigarettes by taking tougher action against criminal gangs.”
In the UK and Ireland, PMI merchandises IQOS, the UK’s first heated-tobacco device and IQOS MESH, its premium vaping product along with a number of other e-cigarette brands, and it has “made a commitment to develop, market and sell smoke-free alternatives, and encourage adult smokers to switch to these alternatives, as quickly as possible around the world.”
All well and good thus far, unless of course it and Frontier Economics have got it all wrong. There’s the rub—so watch this space in future for further reports about this, as PMI gets ahead of the pack and becomes the first tobacco company in the world to go in this anti-smoking direction.
But how long before PMI and Frontier Economics move into Russia and Eastern Europe with the same very detailed and in-depth research?
PMI already appears to have its sights on Russia, as well as other East European destinations. There are those—including the Russian government perhaps—who may be interested to partner it in order to wipe tobacco off the face of the map in the respective countries.
Times change
The times they are really a-changing for traditional tobacco-leaf smokers and alternative e-cig smokers and their providers respectively and equally. That is much more so in some parts of the world than in others, just as the marketing and investment for these two different camps is also changing.
