Globally, the diversity of tobacco products available and tobacco industry marketing strategies has increased. To inform tobacco control efforts, it is critical to understand who is likely to use different tobacco products in different countries because how various products are regulated and how the industry markets them likely differs across countries. Better understanding these differences has been called out as a key priority to advance tobacco control efforts.
One important area of such investigation is heated tobacco product (HTP) marketing, regulation, and population impact. Interest in HTPs (electronic tobacco products that heat tobacco) has expanded. HTPs are available in >60 countries, with considerable uptake in countries such as Japan and Italy, where HTPs have been available since 2014. Some HTP brands from big tobacco companies include “Mok” (China Tobacco), “iFuse” and “glo” (British American Tobacco), “Ploom TECH” (Japan Tobacco), and “lil” (Korea Tobacco).
The global HTP leader is IQOS from Philip Morris (PM). IQOS is a highly relevant and timely tobacco product for 2 countries—Israel and the US—where IQOS has faced particularly interesting histories of tobacco regulation. Israel represents one of the first countries in which IQOS emerged (December 2016). Initially, IQOS was not regulated as a tobacco product, but since April 2017, it has been—first facing relatively weak tobacco legislation and then more progressive legislation, including an advertisement ban on all tobacco and nicotine products (effective March 2019), a requirement for plain packaging, and prohibited point-of-sale displays (effective January 2020). IQOS is currently (as at 2022) the only HTP available in Israel.
