Why Marlboro Maker Altria Is Betting On Smoke-Free Products

Cigarettes were once prominently displayed in Hollywood films and in glossy magazines. But decades of evidence that smoking kills has caused consumption to plummet. The tobacco industry sold less than 11 billion packs of cigarettes in the U.S. in 2020 down from more than 21 billion packs two decades earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of smokers has dwindled as well. Almost 57% of American men smoked cigarettes in 1955, the CDC says. Today just 11.5% of U.S. adults, or about 28 million Americans, are smokers.

That has caused an existential crisis for tobacco companies. Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris USA and the nation's largest tobacco company reported an almost 10% drop in cigarette sales in 2022 from the year prior. The maker of Marlboro’s says it wants to help smokers transition away from cigarettes to what it calls “reduced harm alternatives” like e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn products. But Altria’s “Moving Beyond Smoking” campaign has raised eyebrows among its critics who claim the company is still hooked on cigarettes.

In 2022 cigarettes and cigars made up about 89% of the company's sales. Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. accounting for more than 480,000 deaths annually.

So are e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn products really less harmful than traditional cigarettes and what impact will those devices have on kids? Watch the video to learn more.

Chapters:
00:00 — Introduction
02:52 — History
07:25 — E-cigarettes
10:59 — The future

Produced and Shot by: Shawn Baldwin
Edited by: Nic Henry
Supervising Producer: Jeniece Pettitt
Graphics: Andrea Schmitz

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Why Marlboro Maker Altria Is Betting On Smoke-Free Products