Supermarket giants Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have come to the attention of Trading Standards for potential breaches of the law after it emerged that tobacco-heating devices are being advertised in some stores.
Despite tobacco advertising being banned in the UK in 2002, the retailers are using in-store video screens and posters to advertise the iQos, a device which heats tobacco using an electric current and is marketed as a ‘smoke-free alternative to cigarettes’. Morrisons also runs adverts for the similar Ploom device.
Sainsbury’s displays in-store ads for the iQos device (image credit: BBC)
There are concerns that the devices may be more harmful than traditional vapes, which contain a nicotine-infused liquid rather than tobacco. Although there is a lack of evidence regarding the long-term health effects of heated tobacco, experts believe it is likely to be less harmful than smoking cigarettes.
CTSI joint Lead Officer for Vapes, Kate Pike, told the BBC that it would be up to courts to decide whether advertising such products is prohibited in law. “The only people who can definitively test it are the courts,” she said. “Now the courts are chocka. Trading Standards is very stretched, and I think that’s probably the reason why you’re seeing more and more of these ads.
“It’s taking the mick, is my view.”
Concerns about the advertising of the devices had previously been raised by the former health secretary Steve Brine, who pointed out to iQos manufacturer Philip Morris International (PMI) that tobacco advertising is prohibited and requested that they “desist from such promotion in the future”.
Brine later thanked PMI for “agreeing to comply with our request to stop advertising and promoting the iQos device”.
PMI said it only agreed to suspend advertising, not stop, with a spokesperson telling the BBC: “We maintain our view that communications regarding the iQos device at appropriate points of sale is lawful.”
