Science is an enabler at Japan Tobacco International, driving innovation in risk-reduced tobacco products and reinforcing its position when responding to critics. 'Each scientific study is a piece of the puzzle,' says Ian Jones, V.P. of the Scientific Product Assessment Center at JTI.
Featuring:
IAN JONES
V.P., Scientific Product Assessment Center
Japan Tobacco International
Transcription:
00:00:09 --> 00:00:29
Brent Stafford: Hi, everybody. I'm Brent Stafford, and welcome to another episode of Reg Watch on GFN.TV. We're here in Warsaw, Poland, again from the Global Forum on Nicotine 2024. And I'm here with Ian Jones. You are the vice president of R&D, something out of lab of some sort.
00:00:29 --> 00:00:35
Ian Jones: Yes, we have a very grand title, the Scientific Product Assessment Centre, the lab. Exactly.
00:00:35 --> 00:00:38
Brent Stafford: The lab at Japan Tobacco International.
00:00:38 --> 00:00:39
Ian Jones: Correct, yes.
00:00:40 --> 00:00:44
Brent Stafford: JTI, in other words. So that's big tobacco.
00:00:44 --> 00:00:45
Ian Jones: We are big tobacco, yes.
00:00:46 --> 00:00:47
Brent Stafford: Tell us about JTI.
00:00:48 --> 00:01:40
Ian Jones: JTI... It's an extremely interesting company its origins are in Japan, Japan Tobacco or used to be Japan Tobacco and salt in the original days so it's a government monopoly for tobacco and salt and then this was divested um the salt business was directed to breakfast and back in actually 25 years ago we've just had our anniversary JT purchased Reynolds International to form what is now Japan Tobacco International to take the Japanese tobacco business internationally to many markets. And the company, the international business is now headquartered in Geneva in Switzerland, but I work in Japan. Our laboratories are still based in Japan from the old days. So I'm based in Japan, but JTI is headquartered in Geneva in Switzerland.
00:01:41 --> 00:01:46
Brent Stafford: I'm fascinated about this salt thing. I didn't know that was the case.
00:01:46 --> 00:02:14
Ian Jones: Indeed. If you ever get the opportunity to come to Tokyo, we actually have the Tobacco and Salt Museum, which again is a hangover from the old days. Tobacco and salt used to be a state monopoly in Japan. until the mid 20th century and then I say they were divested out but I guess two large commodities and salt business yes huge in Japan obviously coastal lots of sea salt
00:02:15 --> 00:02:22
Brent Stafford: Well, I think a lot of people don't actually, are not familiar with the fact that salt is like probably the oldest commodity.
00:02:23 --> 00:02:28
Ian Jones: Exactly, yes. Well, salary comes from the word salt from the old Roman times. Exactly.
00:02:29 --> 00:02:35
Brent Stafford: So let me ask you, science and JTI, how important is the science of safer nicotine products?
00:02:36 --> 00:03:15
Ian Jones: Science is an integral part of JTO. It's an enabler. The science helps us develop our products. It helps us determine what we can put into the product, whether it's an ingredient or material. But also, equally, it's extremely important in understanding what comes out of our products. In terms of what we do in the laboratory in Japan, which is testing, for example, what's in the vape of a heated tobacco product. and doing the risk assessments, all the way through to the clinical studies, if we were doing a clinical study. So science is an enabler in the company, and it's one of the key pillars on which our business is founded.
00:03:15 --> 00:03:19
Brent Stafford: Walk us through your safer nicotine products at JTR.
00:03:20 --> 00:04:01
Ian Jones: So we have several platforms. So we have the heated tobacco platform, Plumex. We also have in Japan something that's called an infused tobacco platform, which is essentially a tobacco where an aerosol is passed through it. I call it the rice steamer type product. where the tobacco is heated much more gently to about 40 degrees centigrade. This is in Japan. We have electronic cigarettes as well in some markets, and we also have the oral smokeless, the snus and the nicotine pouch. We have quite a wide portfolio of what we call RRP, rejuvenation product propositions in the company.
00:04:01 --> 00:04:04
Brent Stafford: What's been the most popular with consumers?
00:04:05 --> 00:04:50
Ian Jones: To date, I think the heated tobacco system products are the main category. We've evolved over time. We didn't start with all of them at the same time. We actually started way back in the day with a charcoal heated product called Steam Hot One where the cigarette-like product where the tip is charcoal. You lit that and that heated the tobacco. So that, 20, 30 years ago, we started with that. Then we moved to snus with the acquisition of Gallagher. We acquired a snus business. So that was actually my introduction to RRP. I started, when I joined the company, I started almost immediately working on snus. And then this evolved over time to where we are today, you say, with this quite broad portfolio.
00:04:52 --> 00:05:04
Brent Stafford: So when it comes to what you can say scientifically about risk-reduced products, how much safer are they or less harmful, depending on how you want to put it?
00:05:05 --> 00:06:04
Ian Jones: I think that's a very difficult, because A, what is your comparison and what is, safe in what context? Are you talking about safe in terms of lung cancer or are you safe holistically, everything together, which is very difficult to quantify from my perspective. What I would say, we are building, let's say, a scientific jigsaw puzzle on many of these products. And each study, scientific study, is a piece of that puzzle. And as we add pieces, you start to see the big picture. But we're not there yet. We've got many pieces there, interconnected, but we still have some pieces missing, particularly in terms of the, let's say, the long-term effects. These products haven't been around long enough to really get the epidemiology on them, the real-world data, real-world evidence to say what the relative, the absolute relative risk is. But so far the indicators for many of these products that have, let's say, good product stewardship around them is promising.
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08
Brent Stafford: Yeah, compare them to a cigarette.
00:06:09 --> 00:07:12
Ian Jones: Comparing to cigarettes, if you look at toxicological activity, it's order of magnitude lower, shall we say, in terms of traditional cigarettes using the standard toxicological methods that we use in the tobacco world. So my gut feeling as a scientist is you're probably looking at an order of magnitude. But I say until we have these real long-term epidemiological studies, we're not sure. I mean, take cigarettes, for example. It wasn't really until the epidemiology from the British Doctors Survey came through that we really understood the correlation between the health risks of cigarette smoking and lung cancer, for example, in this instance. And I think with this type of data, But epidemiology takes, you know, decade or decades to roll through. So we will find in time. So these are really, for me, the major missing pieces of this jigsaw puzzle that we're building.
00:07:12 --> 00:07:17
Brent Stafford: Do you guys do any research around biomarkers to help shorten that time?
00:07:17 --> 00:08:05
Ian Jones: This is a big focus for us at the moment. So yes, in the laboratory I lead, we have a large biomarker study. We only look at biomarkers of exposure. where we can see what constituents do you take into the body. And then we also have what we call biomarkers of effect, which actually are biomarkers for disease endpoints, typically cancer endpoints, cardiovascular disease, COPD. So we look at these biomarkers as well. And typically, again, there's an order of magnitude reduction in the levels of these biomarkers when people switch completely from cigarette smoking to the use of, I'd say, at least our RP, and I know some of the other companies in the field have published similar data.
00:08:06 --> 00:08:15
Brent Stafford: So, what are the statements that JTI makes in public marketing materials, that kind of thing around the less harmful?
00:08:16 --> 00:11:03
Ian Jones: We're actually very limited on what we can say. As I'm sure you know, in many, many countries, we're not permitted to make any health-related claims for these products. So we have to really, I won't say restrict ourselves, we have to go back to the science and make factually correct scientific statements. So, for example, I can talk about 90... 5% or 99% reduction in certain harmful constituents in vapor compared to the levels of those constituents smoke. But that's an indication. It's a piece of the jigsaw puzzle. It doesn't mean that there's a 95%, 99% reduction risk. You need additional pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to build that. Other ones, indoor air quality is another one that we work on in the lab in Japan. We look at when people are using these products in a room like this compared to if someone was smoking? What are the levels of constituents in the area there? Again, we see a very sharp reduction in the level of constituents of concern in the air where people are using ORP compared to when people are smoking. So again, for us, our communication is science-based. It has to be science-based, because otherwise we're not permitted to make general ones. As a scientist, and especially someone who has a passion in scientific communication, the challenge is to explain that in a way that the audience understands. and who are our target audience. Obviously the main ones are consumers. I'd love the consumers to understand the science we're doing so that they can make the choice about the type of product they want to use. But it can also be regulators. In the very early days of RRP, just after I started, a lot of my work was explaining to regulators how these products work and I really rolled it back to the most basic so as I mentioned earlier an infused product is a rice steamer because it is a basically a vapor or an aerosol that is passing for a solid substrate which is tobacco in our case and then you breathe that an electronic cigarette is a kettle it's just a device that heats a liquid as your kettle does your kettle steam comes out of the spout in electronic cigarettes it's the aerosol that comes out of the mouthpiece and a heated tobacco product is like a frying pan you're just putting something against a hot surface tobacco against a heated surface and that's the way literally the way in the early days i was explaining it uh including in your own country canada actually so ian the
00:11:03 --> 00:11:34
Brent Stafford: global state of tobacco harm reduction due to a report just a couple of months ago heralding this massive thing that's gone on in Japan. I think it's like 52%, 59% reduction in combustible tobacco use in the last 10 years. Now, a lot of that is due to heated tobacco products. A competitor of yours, obviously, has done a lot in Japan, and then, of course, JTI has. Yes, we do. Tell us about the success that's happened in Japan and about the plume.
00:11:34 --> 00:13:41
Ian Jones: So Japan, my view, it was a coming together of various factors that brought us this situation today. Number one is just the Japanese love for innovative products. If you've ever been to Akihabara in Tokyo, the electronics district, that's where you get the electronics today that you could get in Europe next year or in the USA. So they love innovative products. But for me, I think looking at it, the biggest impact was actually the Tokyo Olympics several years ago. Because at the Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese authorities introduced some new regulations which really further restricted the ability of where people could smoke and really trying to make the Olympics smoke-free, for want of a better word. And I think that plus the, I say the love of innovation, really was the time is right for a product like the heated pack product. You must remember that electronic cigarettes in Japan are, consumer products are not permitted. Nicotine containing products without tobacco are regulated as pharmaceuticals. And to my knowledge, there's no pharmaceutical-approved electronic cigarette in Japan yet. So there's no electronic cigarettes in Japan. So it has to contain tobacco. So I think that's where heated tobacco, basically, that's the opportunity in Japan. And you're correct that Japanese consumers have taken up in large numbers. It's not the only reason for the large reduction in the smoking. Part of it is also due to, say, these additional regulations smoking bars and restaurants is very heavily restricted now. And really, if you've been to Japan, you can't smoke on the streets. Even on the streets, you find little smoking cabins. People have to go there. So it's very... I'd say almost unique environment that really was a great breeding ground, incubation ground for the heated tobacco product.
00:13:41 --> 00:13:45
Brent Stafford: So can you use your heated tobacco product on the street?
00:13:45 --> 00:14:58
Ian Jones: Yes, you can use the heated tobacco product, although observationally I would say that people are really following the Let's say the standard, so with the cigarettes, so you'll see people going to smoking cabins to use a heated tobacco product. The big change is actually the bars and restaurants. So many bars and restaurants, you can even see the signs on the doors which will be heated tobacco allowed, cigarettes not. And I think that's obviously a great driver of people to at least try the heated tobacco products. It didn't happen overnight. It did take time. The products have got better with time. I think even the other companies will agree with this. And they continue to improve, continue to evolve as we learn more, particularly around consumer acceptance of these products i think there's still a gap between current heated tobacco products and the experience and the cigarette smoking experience i still think this gap and that's probably the main focus area i'd say if the companies look at the moment to try and close that gap can you have a heated tobacco product that provides you the same holistic product experience as a cigarette
00:14:59 --> 00:15:09
Brent Stafford: So does public health in Japan have the same hatred for big tobacco as they do in, say, the UK and Canada?
00:15:12 --> 00:15:50
Ian Jones: I think in my experience, again, I think public health, having worked in the UK and in Japan, a bit more balanced, we say. So, for example, in Japan, we... We still have more opportunities to discuss with fellow scientists than compared to the UK. And we're less excluded from certain scientific conferences, et cetera, than we are. Not just the UK, actually, in Europe and even in America to some extent. So there's less exclusion, I'd say, deliberate exclusion of people working for tobacco companies in Japan.
00:15:51 --> 00:16:07
Brent Stafford: Yeah, I mean, that is definitely a question I want to ask you is how do you handle it as a scientist to be excluded? At least that's the case in many places. But certainly you're not going to be able to publish in certain... In certain journals, absolutely.
00:16:07 --> 00:17:36
Ian Jones: It's an odd one. I used to work in university in the UK and I worked on next in science. That was sort of the link that brought me to this industry. And I literally finished... I gave my last lecture on a Friday. Next Monday, I started with JTI. And literally over that weekend, there were certain journals I couldn't publish, certain conferences I could no longer go to, and even certain colleagues who would be reluctant to be seen speaking to me. It's disappointing, I think is the best way I can say, because for me as a scientist, the science is the thing. If you're doing good science, there's nothing, why should anyone not want to hear you? As a scientist, we want our science to be challenged, be reviewed by our peers. I mean, it's part of the scientific publication process, peer review, an incredible point. So I don't see why, you know, it seems... very odd that we should be excluded I can sort of understand why because sometimes maybe you don't want to if you can quieten down one party then maybe it makes your argument stronger you have a louder voice But it does, you know, in the science world, it just seems, I say, disappointing. I think it's the most pleasant way to put it at the moment.
00:17:36 --> 00:17:42
Brent Stafford: So, I mean, do you ever feel like you're sold out or do they ever try to make you feel that way?
00:17:43 --> 00:18:28
Ian Jones: Yes, I've been called some very interesting names over the years. At least originally. I'd say it's getting better more recently. I've been working for the industry now for 18 years. And I'd say in the first few years, it was quite hard. And it was, I'd say, upsetting to some extent when colleagues I knew who I'd worked with before, collaborated with before, actually, would suddenly stop talking to you. But since the rise of the HTP, the e-cigarettes, We know more about the snus products, for example, which is one of the ones that I'm most familiar with, and now the heated tobacco products. I think people are beginning to open up and be a bit more willing to discuss, but still not everybody.
00:18:29 --> 00:18:32
Brent Stafford: Is tobacco control an enemy?
00:18:34 --> 00:19:46
Ian Jones: No, I don't see enemies. I think that's a wrong path to go down. Once you start thinking that, then… Well, they certainly see big tobacco as an enemy. They can figure out what they want. But from my side, they are a stakeholder in the world that I live in nowadays. And where I do have the opportunity, I'm very happy to discuss places like the Global Forum on Nicotine here. We do have some public health tobacco control here. But I love that debate. And I've been to, let's say, very challenging conferences before. I just stick to my guns. I stick to what I know. I put the science out there, put my views on the science out there and have it to be challenged. I think you've got to... The science, we don't have the Hippocratic Oath. That's a medical thing. But for me, I've got a very strong sort of scientific equivalent. I'm not sure what the word for it would be, but judge me on the science, judge me on what I say. If you disagree, great, because it's a very boring world if we all agree.
00:19:47 --> 00:19:52
Brent Stafford: So why is an event like the Global Forum on Nicotine an important event to be at?
00:19:54 --> 00:21:56
Ian Jones: Because you need to have that stakeholder, the various points of view. I think that's the point. When I used to teach university, when I'm now coaching or mentoring junior scientists, I quite often talk about putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Think from their perspective. And really, to be able to do that, you've got to have some knowledge and have spoken to them. So what is tobacco control concerned? What are the key things from public health? What are the regulators? The lovely thing I like about GFN is that we have the consumer advocates here. There are very, very few conferences that I attend where we can hear the consumer voice. And at the end of the day, they're at the centre of all of this. There's a maelstrom of debate and, you know, let's say, words flying around them, but they're still at the centre. And so that's why I like these events, because you get the consumer voice development putting itself in their mind. Do they care if it's a 95, 96, 97% reduction in something they've never heard about? Or what is their concern? And the big one at the moment is nicotine science. The big question is, how dangerous is nicotine? How dangerous is it? Well, nicotine, like many things, to use the old phrase, the dose makes the poison. Nicotine is a chemical that has an effect on your body, in your brain, and there's a dose response. The more you have, the stronger the effect. I'd say the levels typically found in tobacco product is not a cause of disease. Nicotine does not cause cancer, at least the evidence we have to date shows that nicotine does cause cancer. Not everyone agrees, and some will say nicotine is the most dangerous thing in the world out there. Anything in excess.
00:21:56 --> 00:22:03
Brent Stafford: But how serious should people take that concern? Because we do hear that. They think it's the most dangerous thing out there.
00:22:04 --> 00:23:05
Ian Jones: I think what we need to do is actually put forward the facts. Nicotine is not safe. Nothing in this world is safe. If you drink excess of water, that will do some serious harm. But I think in the levels you typically find in the tobacco and today's nicotine-containing products, It's not going to be causing a major disease, tobacco-related disease. I think we need to count it. But where do they find that information source? At the moment, the volume is turned quite high on the people who want to say or get the message across that nicotine is harmful. And as the industry, we can do our best. But as you mentioned earlier, we're limited in... opportunities where we can get this message across. But I think that it is going to take an effort of public health officials and others, and it's happening, to really balance the debate, you know, being what does the science tell us.
00:23:07 --> 00:23:22
Brent Stafford: Boy, I'd sure like the science to be able to set WHO, FDA, you know, a bunch of the other public health agencies who keep saying that if you're a 15-year-old and you use an e-cigarette, it could give you brain damage.
00:23:25 --> 00:24:35
Ian Jones: Yes. Based on, as a scientist, I'd say, where's your evidence? I think there's a lot of assumptions. There's a lot of people putting forward unsubstantiated claims because they sound scary and driving off. When I was very young in the UK, there was a public health campaign where you had, it's actually a cartoon character, I don't know why they use cartoons, called Nick O'Teen. And basically the cartoon was Superman beating up nicotine. And so, and I remember this one when I was, you know, that high probably. But so it was drawn into my head at the time that nicotine is the bad thing because Superman wasn't beating up a cigarette, he was beating up nicotine. And I think that many of us grew up with this and it's sort of ingrained in our brains. And it's only once you take a step back and look at the science Nicotine is not safe. Yes, nicotine has addictive potential. People become addicted to nicotine. But in terms of causing the cancer and the other things it's alleged to do, the evidence doesn't take us there at the moment.
00:24:36 --> 00:24:54
Brent Stafford: I'm wondering if this whole thing that, you know, using nicotine in an e-cigarette as an adolescent can give you brain damage. I wonder if that is not the same equivalent as don't smoke, Johnny, or it'll stunt your growth.
00:24:55 --> 00:25:56
Ian Jones: It's something like this. Again, yes, it's using, I wouldn't say scare tactics, You have to understand what does nicotine do in the brain? I mean, quite often I often talk about nicotine being like a volume control. Nicotine can turn up brain activity, turn it down. Science calls it a neuromodulator. It modulates brain activity. So if you like something, use nicotine, you can say, actually, I really like it. It turns up the volume a bit. But it can also, in certain instances, it can turn it down. I'm stressed and Nixie can actually turn down your stress. It really depends on the way you are mentally at the time. Nixie has this modulator effect. And so in developing brain, it's a huge research gap at the moment because certainly we cannot do it. I don't think anybody can do Nixie research in adolescence or young people. It's just, how do you do that? It's really tricky.
00:25:58 --> 00:26:05
Brent Stafford: I wonder sometimes in our conversations that we have with folks whether or not people just don't have room in their hearts for redemption.
00:26:07 --> 00:27:49
Ian Jones: Possibly, that could be it. I mean, there's a lot of baggage on my shoulders. I'd say 18 years I've been in the company, I wasn't here in the days of the big Senate hearing or whatever in the States and whatever happened in the past. what I say to people is judge me on who I am, judge me on the science I put forward. I'm happy to be critiqued. I'd love it because that's how you actually get better as a scientist is to get that feedback from your peers. But I do believe Knowing the industry now and looking at the science industry does, I think it does some of the best science in the air ends because they have to. We're under such tight view that the industry has to do the best. This morning I was in preparation for this, I had a quick look on the flight. this morning at scientific paper retractions. I don't know if you're familiar with what this is, but sometimes people publish a paper, then someone finds there's something wrong with it or the date has been manipulated and it's retracted. So I had a look this morning at the history of paper retractions in the nicotine tobacco field. There's been 42 in the database that's online at the moment. Not one of them from tobacco industry. They're all, for want of a better word, tobacco control. So where we have published, and we still do have the ability to publish, I think the science is good. I think it's strong because it has to be good because the scrutiny, the bar is so high.