As a challenger business committed to consumer choice, we’re offering increasing numbers of our adult smokers a wide portfolio of next generation products, or NGP.
Both our own – and independent – scientific evidence suggests they’re all potentially safer to consumers than continuing to smoke cigarettes.
To better set the scene though, it’s helpful to unpick the differences between tobacco, nicotine and smoking, and address the confusion and misinformation that often exists around these topics.
Nicotine is a naturally occurring constituent of the tobacco plant, one also found in other plants, such potatoes, tomatoes and aubergines, albeit at lower levels.
Much like caffeine, nicotine is a stimulant with a long history of being consumed for enjoyment and pleasure by humans.
Public health bodies have concluded that nicotine is addictive. However, they also agree it’s the smoke created by the burning of tobacco leaf that contains most of the hundred-plus harmful chemicals responsible for smoking-related disease. This is a crucial distinction. While our NGP usually contain nicotine, advances in science and technology enable them to deliver this to users without the need to burn tobacco.
Our scientific research demonstrates that our NGP produce substantially fewer and lower levels of the harmful chemicals in cigarette smoke. This evaluation – what we call product characterisation – essentially marks the beginning of each NGP’s journey across our rigorous scientific assessment framework to substantiate their harm reduction potential.
To aid understanding of the harm reduction potential of each NGP relative to cigarettes, we’ve created an illustrative representation of the current scientific evidence, the relative risk scale. Click on the product types in our interactive graphic below to read more about each.
None of our next generation products – including the Pulze and iD heated tobacco platform – involve combustion and the generation of harmful smoke.
New research: Significantly lower levels of harmful chemicals in blu 2.0 and blu bar vapour compared to cigarette smoke.
The scale highlights that our portfolio of NGP possess varying characteristics. For instance, some contain tobacco, others don’t. Some deliver nicotine via lung inhalation; others deliver it via the gum linings.
These characteristics determine their respective positions on the scale. Crucially, though, no NGP involves tobacco combustion and the generation of harmful smoke. This means they’re all potentially significantly harm reduced, relative to continuing to smoke cigarettes.
The best course of action that smokers can take to improve their health is not to use any tobacco or nicotine product. However, millions of adult smokers are either uninterested or unwilling to do this. Therefore, offering our adult consumers the choice to switch to potentially harm reduced NGP is the next best option.
Our scientific research demonstrates that our NGP produce substantially fewer and lower levels of the harmful chemicals in cigarette smoke.
