An FDA panel is ruling on a new Philip Morris

An FDA panel is ruling on a new Philip Morris


The tobacco giant Philip Morris is hoping to sell Americans on a new way to puff on tobacco. It’s not an e-cigarette; rather, it’s a “heat not burn” smokeless tobacco device called IQOS that’s already available in 29 countries.To get more news about iqos, you can visit hitaste.net official website.

IQOS, which is pen-shaped and comes with an iPod-like recharger, vaporizes mini tobacco sticks by heating them. Philip Morris claims this cuts users’ exposure to the carcinogens created when tobacco is burned, and that it could save the lives of smokers. Critics worry the slick packaging and marketing around IQOS seems more geared toward grabbing the attention of youth than helping wean longtime smokers off cigarettes.

This week, an independent panel of experts at the Food and Drug Administration is discussing IQOS’s potential health impact, and whether Philip Morris’s claims are backed by scientific data. By the end of Thursday, the panel is expected to vote on how IQOS (pronounced “eye-kose”) should be marketed in the US, where the company says it could help 6 million smokers quit. The FDA may or may not follow the panel’s advice.

Whatever the outcome of the meeting, however, the panel’s decision is being viewed as a test case for the growing market of cigarette alternatives. If the panel looks favorably upon IQOS, and FDA takes its recommendation (it usually does), the device would be the first tobacco product marketed under a “modified risk” claim in the US.FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has already indicated that he wants to drive down smoking rates by making traditional cigarettes less addictive with nicotine limits, and by offering US consumers safer alternatives to smoking.

An IQOS FDA approval would “send a strong signal to consumers that these products are likely to be less harmful for them to use,” said University of Waterloo public health researcher David Hammond, “and in practice, that will serve as an endorsement.”

But even more than that, Michael Eriksen, dean of the school of public health at Georgia State University and a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health, called the decision “historic.”