PHILIP Morris International unveiled its new direction to pivot its 170-year-old business to promote a smoke-free Philippine society during an information technology summit recently.
PMFTC President Denis Gorkun revealed this in his presentation during the plenary session of the “SOFTCON.ph 7: The Philippine Software Industry Conference” organized by the Philippine Software Industry Association, a non-profit organization composed of around 150 IT companies. PMFTC Inc. is the Philippine affiliate of PMI.
Gorkun said there is a need for PMI to innovate responsibly but stressed that this is much more difficult in practice.
“As a company we have developed — and continue to develop — a suite of smoke-free platforms that eliminate combustion but deliver the experience that people who would otherwise continue to smoke desire,” Gorkun said.
Gorkun said the new PMI vision is anchored on an advocacy they call “Unsmoke” which focuses on three simple messages: “If you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you smoke, quit. If you don’t quit, change.”
Gorkun said “despite the implementation of stricter measures (on smoking), the cold hard reality is that there are still 16 million smokers in the Philippines with a cold turkey quit rate of just 4%. The World Health Organization estimates that there will still be more than one billion smokers worldwide in 2030, about the same level of smokers we have today.”
To address legitimate public health concerns related to smoking, Gorkun said PMI had invested $6 billion in research and development and tapped over 400 scientific experts.
They produced hundreds of studies that have been peer-reviewed or in the process of being peer reviewed.
