PMI c.e.o. says cigarettes should “[collect] dust behind glass cases.” Photo credit: PMI
Jacek Olczak, Philip Morris International’s (PMI) c.e.o. told media, politicians, and policy makers at the UnHerd Club in London that “cigarettes belong in museums” as he called on governments globally to accelerate the end of cigarettes.
Olczak went on to say that current policies to reduce smoking prevalence are not working fast enough and may be prolonging smoking.
PMI has invested more than US$10.5 billion (as of March 31, 2023) since 2008 in developing and commercializing smoke-free products—which presently account for 35% of PMI’s total net revenues.
“Our ability to make further progress is being blocked by those who are blindly guided by a desire to see an end to the industry rather than an end to cigarettes,” Olczak said. “This is very frustrating.”
“It is no longer a case of if these smoke-free alternatives are better than cigarette smoking; it is a case of by how much.”
Drawing upon a new hypothetical model based on World Health Organization data, estimates, and methods, as well as other third-party data, Olczak explained that even if smoke-free products were assumed to be only 80% less risky than cigarettes, if people who currently smoke were to switch to them completely, then over their lifetime there’s a potential for a tenfold reduction in smoking-attributable deaths compared with historical tobacco control measures alone.
Olczak called on governments around the world to follow the examples of countries like Sweden and Japan—as well as the UK—and adopt policies that give adult smokers who do not quit a wide choice of alternatives to continuing smoking so they can make better choices and cigarettes can become “a historical artifact, a museum piece collecting dust behind glass cases.”