The Boss of the World's Largest Cigarette Company: Stop Smoking

Peter Nixon, Managing Director of PMI's UK affiliate Philip Morris Limited, appeared live on Good Morning Britain on 13 March 2019 to talk about the company’s ongoing transformation for a smoke-free future. On National No Smoking Day, he appeared on ITV's Good Morning Britain to implore smokers to switch to new heated tobacco products because they are less harmful.

Speaking to co-hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid and medical correspondent Dr. Hilary Jones on the ITV breakfast show, Nixon admitted it would be a big challenge for the company and society at large. He said: “There are a billion smokers in the world. What we’re trying to do is provide alternatives – less harmful alternatives – to those smokers."

Here are the some important highlights from the points he mentioned during the breakfast show:

• People die because of cigarettes and we sell them. I take that very, very seriously. We are part of the problem but we want to be part of the solution. What we're trying to do is give alternatives to smokers.
• I’d love to stop selling cigarettes. But we would go out of business and that wouldn't mean people give up they would just switch to another brand.
• We have been investing in alternative products and I have put all my energy into converting people from the most harmful form of tobacco, which is cigarettes, to less harmful, e-cigarettes and heated tobacco.
• “(When it comes to) heated tobacco – we give this product to smokers for one or two weeks for them to try if they’re not sure if it’s going to work or not. We give it for free for a week or two. Eighty per cent stop smoking at the end of that one or two weeks.
• If the smoker switches, it’s better for them, it’s better for society.

Here you can watch the most striking moment of the program: