Back in 1992, Singapore feared that its gleaming new subway would be wrecked by people using something sticky to disable automatic train doors — so it banned chewing gum.
Twenty-six years later, the prohibition on the import, manufacture and sale of gum is still in place, even though the utility of that harsh curb has never really been proved: Hong Kong’s MTR Corp has not seen the need to restrict mastication to run a rail network many times more reliable than Singapore’s.
Revisiting this history is necessary. The otherwise pragmatic city-state seems to have gotten its hackles up over something that might once again put it on the wrong side of the zeitgeist.
Starting this month, Philip Morris International’s iQoS, British American Tobacco’s glo, Japan Tobacco’s Ploom Tech capsule packs and other heat-not-burn tobacco devices were banished from Singapore. Even to be found in possession of “emerging and imitation” nicotine products, including e-cigarettes, now attracts a S$2,000 (US$1,515) fine.
To be hit by such a regulatory backlash in a major Asian market is bad news for companies investing heavily into alternative nicotine products — Philip Morris alone has bet US$3 billion. But, never mind Big Tobacco — the Singapore ban is illogical for at least three other reasons.
One, heat-not-burn is here to stay. As much as 14 percent of Japan’s tobacco market is now with iQoS. For a product that is barely three years old, it is an impressive switching rate, involving millions of smokers.
Two, Singapore’s own smoking prevalence rate has settled into the 12 to 14 percent range. Education and cessation campaigns will not push it much lower, although raising the minimum smoking age to 21 by 2021, from 18 now, should make some difference.
As Bloomberg View columnist Joe Nocera has said, the only European country to have brought smoking down to 5 percent is Sweden — accomplished with the the help of snus, an alternative nicotine product.
Finally, while it is true that even Hong Kong does not yet allow heat sticks to be sold legally, it has not outlawed possession or use. It is perfectly legal for Hong Kongers to import them after paying duties at the same rate as cigarettes. Japan imposes concessional excise duties, although Tokyo’s decision to raise taxes over five years starting October will bring the levy on heat sticks to between 70 and 90 percent of conventional cigarettes.
Even if Singapore is wary of embracing and taxing them, it could have taken the same ambivalent position as Hong Kong — and waited for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to decide Philip Morris’s license applications, of which there are two.
Unavailability of long-term usage data means heat sticks might not get a modified-risk tobacco product certification.
Indeed, an FDA advisory panel said last month that Philip Morris had failed to show that iQoS reduces the risk of ailments for smokers who make a full switch, although the committee did agree that the devices have been demonstrated to cut down users’ exposure to harmful chemicals.
All this means that the premarket tobacco product application — under which iQoS cannot make claims of reducing health risks — has a higher degree of success.
Snus is in the same boat: Its modified-risk application has been denied for now.
Overall, though, the FDA’s basic approach seems to be sensible; it said very clearly last year that a cornerstone of its comprehensive regulatory plan to prevent premature deaths of 5.6 million people alive today is to ensure that adults who “still need or want nicotine could get it from alternative and less harmful sources.”
However, Singapore seems to believe that since there is no evidence that e-cigarettes help people quit, they should be disallowed.
Some members of Singapore’s parliament have questioned the wisdom of such a strategy. Society’s broader goal of curbing healthcare costs (and productivity losses) from smoking-related complications will not be realized by denying access to heat-not-burn. Yes, there could be a gateway effect: A few teenagers might find the devices cool and start using them, but a no-tar experience for everyone, including the newly addicted, ought to be less harmful than giving current smokers only one choice: quit.
US teenager Michael Fay’s 1994 caning gave the Singapore government a reputation for authoritarianism. The chewing-gum ban meshed nicely with the “nanny-state” narrative. It is an image Singapore did not resent much, and probably even relished.
However, times have changed.
Over the next decade, the city-state’s healthcare spending is expected to overtake outlays on education, Minister of Finance Heng Swee Keat (王瑞傑) said in his annual budget speech on Monday.
Also aging, Japan and South Korea are early Asian adopters of heat-not-burn because of a shared imperative to reduce tobacco-related medical expenditure.
One more reason why Singapore’s blanket ban might be an unhelpful gumming-up of the works.
Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist covering industrial companies and financial services.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.With some concessions for therapeutic use that Singapore agreed to as part of a free-trade accord with the US, strong-flavored medical gum can now be purchased with a prescription at some pharmacies.
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