Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of Phillip Morris lobbied for things like smoking bans in the EU and massive tobacco taxation, actually.
PM has a product they call IQOS; it's a battery powered device that heats up short sticks of tobacco - it's not a vape, there's no liquid, it's still tobacco. Anti-smoking campaigns, bans, etc. made a bunch of previous smokers move to it from normal cigarettes.
Now the thing is, they sell a 20 pack of those short tobacco sticks for IQOS for about the same as a pack of cigarettes. A single stick is the equivalent of one cigarette. The difference is that, on a pack of cigarettes, there's a massive sales tax, together with VAT taxes are about 2/3rds of the price of a pack. With the IQOS thing, there's no sales tax, only 21% VAT, so PM gets to keep the massive difference, and they get to sell you the device that heats them up, too.
Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of Phillip Morris lobbied for things like smoking bans in the EU and massive tobacco taxation, actually.
PM has a product they call IQOS; it's a battery powered device that heats up short sticks of tobacco - it's not a vape, there's no liquid, it's still tobacco. Anti-smoking campaigns, bans, etc. made a bunch of previous smokers move to it from normal cigarettes.
Now the thing is, they sell a 20 pack of those short tobacco sticks for IQOS for about the same as a pack of cigarettes. A single stick is the equivalent of one cigarette. The difference is that, on a pack of cigarettes, there's a massive sales tax, together with VAT taxes are about 2/3rds of the price of a pack. With the IQOS thing, there's no sales tax, only 21% VAT, so PM gets to keep the massive difference, and they get to sell you the device that heats them up, too.