Health Committee on Feb. 12th, 2018

[Peter Luongo]

I'm sorry. There are two things.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

There are more than two things there.

[Peter Luongo]

At least.

First, we're not coming to the committee to talk about plain packaging; that's not our focus for today. Our focus is on doing the right things for Canadian smokers.

Second, I think it's important that we look at what the state of the industry is today and not talk about things that happened decades ago.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Could I clarify my question, then? Given that your company, as you said, wants to end the sale of cigarettes, do you support plain packaging for cigarettes?

[Peter Luongo]

We don't think it's effective, but it's not something that we're opposing.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I want to go to Freeze the Industry.

Thank you for your testimony. I think it's so important to hear from young people because, as we heard, most people who get addicted to cigarettes start young, probably before the age of 18.

I noticed on your website that you said, “Plain packaging is good, but plain and standard is better”. Can you explain the difference between the two?

[Akehil Johnson]

Yes. I'm glad you asked the question because we have some samples of tobacco products here today.

We want all packaging to be plain and standard, in that it would have the health warning and be all slide and shell, with no flip top or anything else. All tobacco products would be slide and shell. When you have different products, you could have the health warning here, but with a product like this, there's branding on the back and all along the sides. When you open up the product itself, you see more branding on the inside. It's the same with this one. for That health warning that was mandated to be on there, you're only seeing it here and it's not on the rest of the product. Take, again, the Vogue Slims: you see the warning here, the warning here, all around, and when you open it up there's advertising. This one actually smells particularly nice as well.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Are you aware if any of your peers started with vaping and ultimately switched to smoking cigarettes?

[Maxime Le]

Absolutely.

[Anabel Bergeron]

To my knowledge, the current perception of vaping is that it's harmless and safer than smoking. “Safer” is a big word. I think we need more evidence-based facts. It's true that once they start vaping, they're more likely to start smoking later on their life.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

The time is up.

Now we'll go to Mr. Oliver.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Luongo, one of your representatives was in to see me in my office in Oakville before this meeting just to let me know what some of your issues were. He asked me to proposed section 20.1:

No person shall promote a tobacco product, including by means of the packaging, (a) in a manner that could cause a person to believe that the product or its emissions are less harmful than other tobacco products or their emissions...

He was making the case that you should be able to advertise new products that have lower risks of smoking than cigarettes. It made me do some research into nicotine. I found this research from 2016. It said:

Nicotine poses several health hazards. There is an increased risk of cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal disorders. There is decreased immune response and it also poses ill impacts on the reproductive health. It affects the cell proliferation, oxidative stress, apoptosis, DNA mutation by various mechanisms which leads to cancer. It also affects the tumor proliferation and metastasis and causes resistance to chemo and radio therapeutic agents. The use of nicotine needs regulation. The sale of nicotine should be under supervision of trained medical personnel.

I remain convinced that our goal as a health committee is to get nicotine, and addiction to it, out of our society. What struck me though was that this was the Indian Journal of Medical and Paediatric Oncology. I thought to myself, India is not known for high smoking rates. I then went on and did a bit more research, and I found this from an article in July 2017:

The tobacco giant is pushing Marlboros in colorful ads at kiosks and handing out free smokes at parties frequented by young adults—tactics that break India’s anti-smoking laws...In internal documents, Philip Morris International is explicit about targeting the country’s youth. A key goal is “winning the hearts and minds of LA-24,” those between legal age, 18, and 24, according to one slide in a 2015 commercial review presentation...Philip Morris’ marketing strategy for India, which relies heavily on kiosk advertising and social events, is laid out in hundreds of pages of internal documents reviewed by Reuters that cover the period from 2009 to 2016...In targeting young adults, Philip Morris is deploying a promotional strategy that it and other tobacco companies used in the United States decades ago. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2002 found that during the 1990s, “tobacco industry sponsorship of bars and nightclubs increased dramatically, accompanied by cigarette brand paraphernalia, advertisements, and entertainment events in bars and clubs.” With cigarette sales declining in many countries, Philip Morris has identified India, population 1.3 billion, as a market with opportunity for significant growth. “India remains a high potential market with huge upside with cigarette market still in infancy.”

Did you lie to the committee when you said Philip Morris wanted out of the cigarette business?

[Peter Luongo]

Absolutely not. It's pretty clear that when you talk about the risks of nicotine, we've always said that nicotine is not risk-free, but you have to look at the continuum of risk. That's the whole point of—

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

In 2016, you were targeting a population of 1.3 billion geared to addicting them to cigarettes. Sometime between 2016 and today at this committee, Philip Morris decided to end its sale of cigarettes?

[Peter Luongo]

Let's be very clear. Our goal is to stop selling cigarettes. I'm not going to speak to the committee about things that may or may not have happened in India—

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Are they happening today in India? Are you trying to addict—

[Peter Luongo]

I'm the managing director—

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

This isn't some foreign place. My neighbours, my friends, my constituents, are from India. They have relatives, they have moms and sons, and daughters who live in India. I view these as my friends and family.

Is Phillip Morris International attempting to addict Indians to cigarettes?

[Peter Luongo]

I can't speak on behalf of Philip Morris other than to say—

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

You did. You said Philip Morris wants out of selling cigarettes, so you did speak for it.

[Peter Luongo]

That is something that is publicly stated. Phillip Morris always adheres to the highest ethical standards when marketing and selling its products. The only thing that we are asking for here in Canada is to tell smokers factual information about the products they can choose between.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

You're moving away from cigarettes, but you're still working to addict Canadians to nicotine, am I right?

[Peter Luongo]

We are trying to switch people who already smoke—who already, based on everything we know, are at high risk of disease—to go to potentially less risky alternatives.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

We've undertaken massive regulation and restrictions on your industry to stop targeting kids, to stop targeting young people so that they don't get addicted to begin with. Now you're left with the population of people you did get addicted, and you're trying to find new ways of keeping them addicted to nicotine instead of finding ways to help them stop smoking.

Have you thought about helping, working with the government to fund an anti-smoking program? Would Philip Morris support funding?

When I was growing up, as a kid, we used to see lots of advertising and government promotion about the dangers of smoking—stop smoking, and don't get addicted to cigarettes. That's gone now. The risks of nicotine and the public awareness of the risks of nicotine have subsided. Now we're seeing new devices—vaping and your heat-not-burn models—making nicotine seem okay again, when it's not.

Would you help sponsor a government program to continue to educate Canadians about the risks of nicotine and why it's important that they not get addicted to it?

[Peter Luongo]

I think there are a lot of things we could look at funding together. You could look at education. You could look at independently verified research on these new products, to address Mr. Eyolfson's concern. I think there are many things that can be done.

Today the government does collect billions of dollars in taxes from the industry that should be going to address these concerns. I think education is always a good thing for consumers.