What Is Heated Tobacco? Pros and Cons of HTPs.

Most people would probably agree that the introduction of vaping has been the biggest development in the world of tobacco harm reduction in decades. The invention of nicotine gum is probably the only event that can compare.

As important as vaping is for public health in and of itself, though, its wide acceptance has also had a secondary benefit in that people have become more interested in smoke-free nicotine products in general. In the end, it may turn out that the obsolescence of traditional smoking will be brought about not by vaping on its own but by a combination of different products.

Heated tobacco products (HTPs) are electronic devices that heat plugs of tobacco until the nicotine turns to vapour. When you inhale the vapour, you absorb the nicotine through your lungs as you would when vaping or smoking.

Heated tobacco has some aspects in common with both vaping and smoking, but it isn’t quite the same as either. Unlike vaping, HTPs do contain real tobacco – but unlike smoking, the heating process is calibrated so that the tobacco doesn’t combust.

Heated tobacco doesn’t quite have the same safety profile as vaping. On the other hand, though, experts widely agree that it is likely less risky than smoking – so it may be the right choice for some people.

In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know.

Overview on Heated Tobacco: Key Takeaways

Here’s a quick overview of the things that you need to know about heated tobacco products.

Heated Tobacco Does:

• Reduce the concentration of harmful compounds that you inhale compared to smoking.
• Provide an authentic tobacco smell and flavour, although the taste isn’t quite the same as smoking.
• Contain actual tobacco leaves, which is both a benefit and a drawback.

Heated Tobacco Doesn’t:

• Produce smoke, although the tobacco does undergo pyrolysis.
• Provide the same range of flavours as vaping.
• Provide the ability to control your nicotine intake as finely as vaping does.

How Do Heated Tobacco Products Work?

A heated tobacco product is a battery-powered electronic device with a blade-shaped heating element on the inside. To use it, you insert a tobacco stick – which looks like a short cigarette – and puff on the filter. One stick provides around 14 puffs over the course of about six minutes, and the device notifies you when the session is over. At that point, you remove the stick and discard it. The device typically provides about 20 sessions – equivalent to a pack of cigarettes – before it needs to be recharged.

The heating blade in a heated tobacco device is calibrated to operate within a specific temperature range, getting hot enough to turn the nicotine in the tobacco to vapour but not hot enough to ignite it.

As you’ll learn shortly, the idea of heating tobacco rather than burning it isn’t new. However, it’s possible that HTPs as we know them wouldn’t have emerged if vaping hadn’t become so popular. Heated tobacco borrows some ideas from vaping. For example, the tobacco sticks are impregnated with vegetable glycerine and propylene glycol – two of the key ingredients in e-liquid – to carry the flavour of the tobacco and promote the formation of bigger clouds.

Heated Tobacco Is Actually an Old Idea

It might surprise you to learn that the idea of heated tobacco products actually isn’t new. In fact, tobacco companies tried to make cigarettes that heated the tobacco rather than burning it for decades before finally getting it right.

Eclipse, Premier, Revo

The Eclipse cigarette was marketed by R. J. Reynolds for a little over 20 years beginning in 1994. An improved version of an earlier unsuccessful product called Premier, the Eclipse cigarette was a tube of propylene glycol-impregnated tobacco with a carbon element at the tip. You’d light the element in the same way as lighting a traditional cigarette. When you puffed on the cigarette, the carbon would make the incoming air hot enough to vaporise the propylene glycol and draw the nicotine out of the tobacco.

Although Eclipse drastically reduced second-hand smoke emissions compared to conventional cigarettes, the carbon element produced a large amount of carbon monoxide. People also had difficulty using Eclipse properly – and when it wasn’t used properly, it essentially became an unfiltered cigarette. Many smokers also said that they weren’t fond of Eclipse’s flavour.

Reynolds briefly relaunched the Eclipse cigarette under the name Revo in 2015 before discontinuing it.

Accord, Heatbar

Philip Morris launched the Accord smoking system in 1998, and it was essentially a precursor to the IQOS system that the company offers today. Like IQOS, Accord used a specially designed cigarette that wasn’t smokable on its own. You used the system by inserting the cigarette into a device that looked a bit like a wireless pager, and the device had an internal heating element that heated the tobacco to provide seven puffs of vapour.

Accord was test marketed in the United States and Japan but was unsuccessful and was eventually pulled from the market in 2006. People reported that they were embarrassed by the need to hold a pager-sized device in order to smoke. Philip Morris revived the idea in 2007 with a redesigned product called the Heatbar, but that also failed to gain wide acceptance. It wasn’t until the introduction of IQOS in 2014 that Philip Morris’s concept of heated tobacco finally found success.

Why Have Modern Heated Tobacco Products Succeeded?

Tobacco companies have experimented with HTPs since at least the 1990s, but those products have only recently found favour with consumers. What’s changed?

• One of the major factors preventing the Accord and Heatbar systems from being successful was that Philip Morris made no health claims when marketing them. At the time that the Accord system was launched, the tobacco industry was embroiled in the legal battle that eventually produced the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. Claiming that heated tobacco was safer than cigarettes would have been the same as admitting that cigarettes were dangerous, and the tobacco industry didn’t want to do that. Since those lawsuits are now over, the tobacco companies are free to market heated tobacco products as the less risky alternatives that experts widely believe them to be.
• Consumers have a much better understanding of the dangers of smoking today. In the 1990s and early 2000s, many people still believed that “light” and “ultra-light” cigarettes were safer than full-flavoured cigarettes. Smokers who might have used heated tobacco products smoked “light” cigarettes instead because they tasted better.
• Because of the popularity of vaping – and in particular, the popularity of devices like large disposable vapes and vape mods – people now accept the fact that a “smoking” device doesn’t have to be the same size as a cigarette.
• Thanks to improvements in battery technology, heated tobacco devices are much smaller and sleeker than they were in the 1990s.
• Heated tobacco products are legal in some places where vaping isn’t. In Japan, for example, vaping products with nicotine are prohibited, but heated tobacco is allowed.

Is Heated Tobacco Safer than Smoking?

Heated tobacco products are widely considered safer than smoking. In 1998, the medical journal Addiction published a study in which the emissions of an IQOS device were compared to the emissions of a tobacco cigarette. The study found that IQOS reduced the emissions of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acrolein, propionaldehyde and crotonaldehyde by 84.9-95.3 percent compared to a cigarette. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States has given Philip Morris permission to market IQOS withtheclaim that it “significantly reduces the production of harmful and potentially harmful chemicals.” Obtaining modified-risk approval from the FDA is extremely difficult.

Is Heated Tobacco Safer than Vaping?

It’s unlikely. Although heated tobacco is probably safer than smoking, it is still a tobacco product, and it still produces harmful compounds in higher concentrations than vaping. The same study cited above also compared the emissions of an e-cigarette to a tobacco cigarette and found that the e-cigarette reduced the production of the above-mentioned harmful compounds from 95 to greater than 99 percent.

NHS does not recommend the use of heated tobacco products.

Wrapping Up: Heated Tobacco Has Benefits and Drawbacks

Heated tobacco is one of the many options on the continuum of tobacco harm reduction – and like other harm reduction products, it isn’t right for everyone.

The fact that HTPs contain tobacco is both the biggest benefit and the biggest drawback of those products. Heated tobacco doesn’t taste like smoking, but it does provide an authentic tobacco flavour. That’s the one thing vaping can’t do since the flavours in vaping products come from food-grade flavouring agents and not from tobacco.

On the other hand, the fact that HTPs contain tobacco also means that they still emit compounds known to be harmful. Those compounds are present at much lower levels than in cigarette smoke, but they’re still there. In e-cigarette vapor, those compounds are either present at much lower levels than in HTPs, or they’re not present at all.

In addition to being a safer option, vaping also has several other benefits compared to heated tobacco.

• Although vapes can’t recreate the flavour of cigarette smoke, they can taste like almost anything else including fruits, desserts, candies and more. HTPs, on the other hand, can only taste like tobacco.
• Vaping gives you the ability to control your nicotine intake, either by changing the nicotine strength of your e-liquid or by adjusting the number of puffs that you take per day. In this way, vaping can be a vehicle for reducing or even eliminating your nicotine intake. Reducing your nicotine intake with heated tobacco, on the other hand, is no easier than it would be with cigarettes.

Are you ready to make the switch? The V2 Vsavi e-cigarette is as easy to use as heated tobacco, and no vaping product provides a wider range of tobacco and menthol flavours. It’s the perfect vape if you’re looking for an authentic experience that’s tobacco free. Shop our starter kits now.