No, we can’t say that at this point. While switching completely to IQOS presents less risk to your health, IQOS is not risk-free and delivers nicotine, which is addictive. If you are concerned about the health effects of smoking, your best option is to quit tobacco and nicotine use altogether. However, switching completely to IQOS is a better choice than continuing to smoke.
Nicotine is addictive. However, it is not the main cause of smoking related diseases. IQOS delivers nicotine in a comparable way to cigarettes. Our clinical studies show that the amount and rate of nicotine absorbed when using one tobacco stick with IQOS is comparable to that of smoking one cigarette.
The percentage refers to the average reduction of the levels of certain constituents prioritized for action by renowned public health organizations such as the WHO and the US FDA found in IQOS tobacco vapor compared to the smoke from a 3R4F reference cigarette. To this effect, we collect the tobacco vapor and smoke under the Health Canada Intense machine-smoking regime (55 mL puff volume, 2 second puff duration, 30 second interval puff) using a comparison on a per stick basis. Reduction calculations exclude nicotine.
The totality of evidence includes PMI’s clinical data (we conducted 10 clinical studies with thousands of participants in the US, UK, Japan and Poland), aerosol chemistry, and data from 18 nonclinical studies. The totality of evidence demonstrates that switching completely to IQOS, while not risk-free, presents less risk of harm compared with continuing to smoke cigarettes.
We use PMI Financials or estimates, IQOS user panels and PMI Market Research. The number of total users we report refers to IQOS users for whom PMI HeatSticks represent at least 5% of their daily tobacco consumption over the past 7 days, while the number of people we estimate have completely quit cigarette smoking refers to IQOS users who have completely quit cigarettes and for whom PMI HeatSticks represent at least 70% of their past 7-day heated tobacco consumption.
It is a cigarette independently designed by the University of Kentucky in the US for scientific research purposes. It is a comparator commonly used in tobacco research, which allows the data of a given study to be compared to that of another study. 3R4F research cigarettes are not commercially available to consumers.