Instead of Greenlighting IQOS Sales, FDA Continues to Slow-Walk Safer Cigarette Substitutes

The introduction of heat-not-burn cigarette substitutes in Japan has led to a precipitous reduction in cigarette consumption.  

Tobacco industry analyst Michael Livery of Piper Jaffray recently issued a report on the Japanese market, citing 2017 sales data. The chart at left suggests that Philip Morris International’s IQOS heat sticks (green) and BAT’s Glo products (blue) caused a 13% decline in cigarette consumption for the year.  Livery deliberately underestimated the number of heat sticks sold because of evidence that up “to 20% (4^th Quarter 2017) of iQOS HeatStick volumes…is getting re-sold in China, Thailand, and Hong Kong, and likely other parts of Asia.”

I suggested (here) that a similar result could be possible in the U.S., if the FDA grants marketing approval for such products. The agency, however, appears to be in no rush to make a decision.

Philip Morris submitted a premarket tobacco application (PMTA) to the FDA on March 31, 2017; it has been pending ever since.

According to the FDA (here), if a PMTA is accepted and found to be complete, the agency will file it and begin substantive review.  “After completing its review, FDA intends to issue an order within 180 days after receipt of the Premarket Tobacco Application that the new product may or may not be introduced or delivered for introduction to consumers.” (emphasis added)

The FDA took eight months to grant Swedish Match a PMTA for eight snus products in 2015 (here).  This week marks the twelfth month of FDA consideration of the IQOS PMTA submitted March 31, 2017.

It is often said that regulation is a slow, deliberate process.  But in this instance the FDA is in apparent violation of its own procedural guidelines.  The FDA simply slow walks any decision on safer options for smokers: it took 2.5 years (here) and 4 years (here) to reject requests to correct inaccurate smokeless tobacco warnings.  All of these are examples of regulatory purgatory that I warned about six years ago (here). 

Our country’s smokers and their loved ones deserve better.