Big Tobacco’s Beyond Nicotine Strategy
By Mathilde de Jeu (editor until June 2025), Irene van den Berg (editor until October 2025), | 13 July, 2023
The past few years, the four biggest tobacco companies (Philip Morris International/Altria, British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco International and Imperial Brands) have all invested in medical products. Meanwhile, they continue to sell tobacco on a large scale in Asia and Africa, which are still growth markets for them.
Research by The Investigative Desk and the Dutch Journal of Medicine (NTvG) shows that Big Tobacco focuses mainly on remedies for conditions caused or aggravated by smoking, such as inhalers for patients with asthma and COPD, technology for home monitoring of diabetes and heart disease, and anti-addiction treatments.
The tobacco industry makes its customers ‘pass the pay desk twice’: once for the cigarettes they smoke, and again for anti-addiction remedies. Tobacco companies thus unethically create their own outlet.
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