Big Tobacco and Electronic Cigarettes

Tobacco companies and electronic cigarettes

The tobacco industry’s reaction to the increasing use of E-Cigs is obvious; “If you can’t beat them, join them”.

On a macro level, society appears to be running scared of Big Tobacco entering into the action (which they are already). Cigarettes companies have a reputation of working contrary to the public good, as verified by the $200 billion 1998 legal pay out in the united states.

Notwithstanding, from an individual user’s point of view, the appearance of the Tobacco corporations into the E-Cig field seems to be generally neutral. Price and quality will finally decide the success (or otherwise) of the products themselves, and the major participants obviously have a vested interest in providing quality products at an appropriate cost. Although the current E-Cig industry organizations might continue to grimace at the possibility of the large players entering the action, this is mainly on the basis of competition, and it is difficult to understand how the customer might suffer, considering that it's going to provide a lot more choice and increased availability. Moreover, Big Tobacco has got the advertising money to seriously push the E-Cig trend ahead, and that can’t be anything apart from a massive benefit to public health.

Without the Cigarette leaders in the action, the artisan level of the present business threatens to be bogged down by the influence of the Drug lobby and the otherwise unavoidable medical restrictions that they are pushing for. The truth is, it would be much better to have E-Cigs licensed just like cigarettes than like drugs. All things considered, everybody knows that cigarette smoking kills millions annually, but it’s still openly offered for sale and used worldwide, with no requirement to state the ingredients or certify its effectiveness. Big Tobacco could well be the saviour of the E-Cig trend, when confronted with the huge vested interests ranged in opposition to it.

Many vaping enthusiasts are anxious that the smaller sized companies might be destroyed by the entrance of the big participants. But craft beers and micro-brewers are surviving and participate productively against the massive beer making giants, so why shouldn’t the same system benefit E-Cigs? Crudely put, preferable to have Big Tobacco inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in!

Whatever the case, the Cigarette firms are already here:

Lorillard Inc., the No. 3 U.S. cigarette player and creator of Kent and Newport cigarettes, paid out $135 million for Blu in 2012 and has invested a great deal to enhance Blu’s distribution and advertising. Blu has become the obvious US national leader, in front of various other main e-cigarette manufacturers like NJOY, Logic, Fin and Mistic that aren’t properties of a leading producer of conventional tobacco cigarettes. In October 2013, Lorillard additionally purchased SkyCigs, a top British independent company.

Reynolds American Inc., the No. 2 U.S. cigarette company and manufacturer of Camel cigarettes, released its Vuse e-cigarette in Denver shops in July 2013. Vuse had rapidly developed a 55.6% retail share of the market in the state within the initial Sixteen weeks, leaving Blu (25.5%) and NJOY (7.3%) ‘in the dust’, as outlined by a Reynolds report at an investor convention in October, reported by cigarette trade tracker Management Science Associates. The business also has a nationwide archive of 12 million cigarette customers to whom it can advertise directly - a significant benefit since most individuals who try out e-cigarettes already smoke. And with no existing constraints on e-cigarette marketing, it can spend heavily in television, print and radio station promotions.

At the same time Altria Group Inc., the No. 1 U.S. tobacco firm and manufacturer of Marlboro cigarettes, started evaluating its MarkTen e-cigarette in Indianapolis in September 2013 and is consequently active rolling out MarkTen into Arizona and beyond.

American E-Cig revenues are estimated at $1.7 billion for 2013, which has mostly been accomplished by tier-two players with restricted marketing and advertising budgets and intermittent distribution. Considering that the marketplace doubled over each of the previous 2 yrs, it’s realistic to envision that the entrance of Big Tobacco will trigger it to blow up tremendously over the coming couple of years, and a few experts forecast that the E-Cig industry could surpass revenues of conventional cigarettes in this decade.

In the united kingdom, British American Tobacco (BAT) released its Vype disposable E-Cig in Sept 2013, with goals to include a rechargeable model in due course. BAT claims that its e-juice is produced in the united kingdom from pharmaceutical-grade ingredients. The United Kingdom marketplace has in the past been dominated by E-Lites.

Britain’s Imperial Tobacco, Number Two in The european union, going through a loss of earnings in part due to the lack of e-cigs from its range, paid out $75m in September for the Oriental corporation Dragonite’s E-Cig section, the brand which grew out of Hon Lik’s initial patented technology.

Quite aside from Big Tobacco’s capability to take on all comers in the opposition camp, especially Big Pharma, it makes sense that if they can develop the market rapidly and bring the general population with them, retrospective oppressive legislation becomes decreasingly probable each month.

Allied to this, the pace of development and research ought to vastly speed up. Considering where we are nowadays with regards to the comparison between vaping and cigarette smoking, the super money that the likes of Lorillard, Reynolds and Altria bring to the gathering ought to rapidly guarantee that the two contending ‘technologies’ become indistinguishable from one another regarding the customer experience. Quality control ought to make sure that a lot of the potentially questionable Chinese produced e-juices are rapidly forced out of the main western marketplaces.

Who realized, that ultimately, it might be Big Tobacco that would eventually end up being the saviour of smokers’ health world-wide!