Ever since vaping emerged as a smoking alternative, the industry has seen consistent growth. More and more companies are continually expanding their product lines, increasing availability, and growing in popularity at an extremely rapid rate. For those of us who are part of the vaping industry, the expansion couldn’t be more beneficial. Big Tobacco, however, is seeing vast decreases in profitability. According to The Daily Caller, the tobacco industry lost out on $127 billion in 2018—a defeat attributed to the rise of vape culture.
One tobacco company in particular – Phillip Morris International – has been developing a new “heat not burn” device, dubbed the iQOS, that is planned to be a contender for giants in the vaping industry. Their iQOS device has been aggressively rushed for approval but is still pending from the FDA. We all know that Big Tobacco is infamous for trying to shut down the vaping community and all parties involved, although this time it seems that they’re willing to do so by any means necessary. The advertising campaign which planned to introduce their new device has come to a screeching halt. As it turns out, Phillip Morris International violated their own social media marketing guidelines! Per their protocols, all influencers and models depicted in their social media and marketing materials must not only be 25 years of age at a minimum, but they need to look as such. The company was embarrassingly exposed for using a 21-year-old Russian model for the iQOS campaign. All posts related to the event were quickly removed. When questioned about the incident, the response was that they didn’t technically “break any laws.”
This goes to show how the vaping industry is such a threat to Big Tobacco that even violating internal policies to get a new product out on the market isn’t off limits. As faithful members of the vaping community, we want you to sound off. How do you feel about Big Tobacco trying to reclaim the image we’ve worked so diligently to improve? In desperation, who really knows how far tobacco companies will go to pry our iron grip away from the industry they once monopolized?
