Why tobacco giant Philip Morris International wants to ban cigarettes in the UK, including its Marlboro brand. It’s not self-sabotage – it’s reacting to consumer trends.

• Tobacco giant Philip Morris International wants to stop selling cigarettes in the UK within 10 years.
• The brand, which makes and sells Marlboro outside the US, is reacting to consumer habits.
• Philip Morris International is betting on smoke-free alternatives, such as e-cigarettes, for growth.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

The CEO of Philip Morris International, the tobacco giant that makes and sells Marlboro cigarettes for customers outside the US, said in an interview over the weekend that the company plans to stop selling cigarettes in the UK within the next 10 years. “The sooner it happens, the better it is for everyone,” Jacek Olczak told The Mail on Sunday.

While this might, at first, seem like a self-sabotaging business move, it’s not. The company is responding to a consumer shift away from smoking tobacco products – and preparing for bans on cigarettes by switching to alternatives. The UK government plans to make the country go smoke-free by 2030.

A spokesperson for PMI told Insider that its “smoke-free products” accounted for nearly 30% of its sales in the second quarter of the year. By 2025, it plans to bring this up to 50% of sales.

These products include various types of e-cigarettes, which do not burn tobacco. They either don’t use tobacco at all or heat tobacco to create nicotine vapor.

While these products aren’t risk-free, they are considered by health professionals to be a better alternative to smoking tobacco as they contain much lower quantities of potentially harmful chemicals.

“Quitting is the best option, but for those who don’t, science and technology has allowed companies like ours to create better alternatives to continued smoking,” Dr. Moira Gilchrist, head of global scientific communications at Philip Morris, said in a statement to Insider.

“Encouraging people who don’t quit to switch to these better alternatives, together with strong regulation will help solve the problem of cigarette smoking once and for all.”

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This isn’t the first time Philip Morris International has said that it wants to stop selling cigarettes for good.

Back in 2018, it ran ads in national newspapers in the UK saying that its “ambition is to stop selling cigarettes in the UK.”

At the time, critics described it as a PR stunt. “The best way Philip Morris could help people to stop smoking is to stop making cigarettes,” British non-profit Cancer Research told Reuters in 2018.

Philip Morris USA, a division of tobacco corporation Altria Group, sells Marlboro in the US. It is a separate company to Philip Morris International – the two split in 2008.