TCL in the World

TCL - Tobbaco Control Law is nothing new to this Industry. We have seen this being cascaded throughout the countries we operate for more than a decade. And, at certain extend, I believe it was needed. For example underage consumption regulation. We even launched a YSP (Youth Selling Prevention) campaign to tacle that!

What I don't agree is to treat it as if it is an easy fix. The consequences of unbalanced regulations will not be what the Governments and even WHO want: the reduction of tobacco consumption. In fact, if wrongly implemented, like in the case of Panama, Suriname and many other markets, it can only fuel the illicit trade (the contraband) business - And these criminals will respect NO LAW, will pay NO TAXES and will bring PRODUCTS with LOW QUALITY, LOW COSTS for sure!

I doubt there's one single person in the World who believes it is good for the health to smoke. Everybody knows the impact that the consumption of this product can bring to your health. But for sure, as in many other controversial categories, they enjoy the pleasure of its consumption. For us, all consumers should be adults that take the conscious decision to smoke or not after properly assessing the risk vs pleasure equation. Like what we do every day in our lives. To decide to eat or not, to exercise or not and even to leave home or not. Unfortunately, even this, is a conscious decision some might need to take every day. This last example, is the reality my family and friends face every day in my beautiful home town – Rio de Janeiro nowadays due to the criminality there!

BAT and many other companies are investing a huge amount of money to bring safer, less risky product to the market. This deal with the society is very high in our agenda. And we believe that with the NGP (Next Generation Product) pipeline such vaping, tobacco heat products, oral tobacco, etc will address this need!

Just to finalise: I am not here against regulation. I believe regulation if well drafted, discussed and well implemented, it will guarantee the results expected by all stakeholders involved.

Maybe in future articles (this is my first one published!) I will talk about how is to work for more than 20 years in this controversial, but very responsible business! Maybe can be useful for other executives despite where they work. The challenges might be different, but how to cope and overcome them, might be very similar. Coming soon!