When multibillion-pound global corporations invest huge sums in medical companies to develop new treatments for serious illnesses such as lung cancer, heart disease, asthma and severe pain, it’s usually widely welcomed.
But a massive new wave of investment is having the opposite effect on medical experts and health campaigners.
Why? Because the cash is coming from tobacco companies – the same businesses that helped to fuel the growth of some of these deadly illnesses in the first place through the sale of cigarettes.
Big Tobacco’s ‘invasion’ of medicine is spearheaded by Philip Morris International (PMI), the Swiss-based giant that sells around a quarter of all the world’s cigarettes – 613billion of them in 2023, including the world’s biggest-selling brand: Marlboro.
Over the past decade, PMI has invested heavily in companies developing treatments for heart attacks, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – a condition caused by damage to the lungs, often by smoking, which can leave those affected struggling to breathe.
A tragic irony is that Eric Lawson, who portrayed the rugged Marlboro man in cigarette ads during the late 1970s and had smoked since the age of 14, died from COPD aged 72.
A new wave of investment in medical companies is coming from tobacco firms – the same businesses that helped to fuel the growth of some of the deadly illnesses being researched in the first place, through the sale of cigarettes
Tobacco remains the biggest cause of lung disease in the UK and smoking-related illness costs the NHS £2.5billion a year.
Other cigarette companies are also developing drug therapies for conditions that their products can cause (more on those later).
Laura Williamson, policy manager at the charity Asthma + Lung UK, told Good Health: ‘There is a huge issue about tobacco companies taking two bites of the cherry here. They must not be able to profit from the illnesses they create.
‘It is the tobacco companies that cause these diseases and the idea that they would further profit from making treatments for these conditions is utterly to be condemned.
‘They are absolutely not trying to help people. If they did, then they would not peddle cigarettes, because that would truly help people in the first place by not harming their health.’
In a similar vein, the UK Clinical Pharmacy Association Respiratory Committee – a national organisation for pharmacists and healthcare professionals specialising in lung health – said last November it was ‘deeply disturbing and perverse’ that PMI should ‘seek to profit from the treatment of smoking-related lung diseases that their products cause’.
Health campaigners in science and academia are taking action – and late last year appeared to have won a crucial victory over medical-inhaler company Vectura, which PMI bought in 2021. Under PMI’s ownership Vectura focused on developing inhalable drugs to treat asthma and COPD – a market forecast to be worth £50billion in the next decade and one that promises huge profits.
PMI’s takeover was condemned by the British Thoracic Society, the European Respiratory Society and the COPD Foundation. Vectura was also effectively barred from holding joint ventures with academics by universities that prohibit collaboration with the tobacco industry.
Vectura employees were also prohibited from publishing their research studies in a range of scientific journals and had to withdraw from involvement in scientific conferences, again because of stipulations that prevented collaboration with the industry.
As a consequence, last September PMI sold Vectura Group for £150million to the electronics firm Molex Asia Holdings – just three years after buying it for more than £1billion, due to what PMI called an ‘unwarranted’ backlash from scientists and health leaders.
However, Good Health’s investigation shows PMI has not actually left the sector or halted development of asthma inhalers.
A PMI spokesman told Good Health that it remains ‘committed to driving innovation in this space over the long term’, adding that it did not sell the whole of Vectura but only one part of it.
‘The remaining units of Vectura Fertin Pharma will continue to operate as a separate company under PMI’s ownership with new branding’, the spokesman said, adding the focus will be on inhaled prescription products for therapy areas that include heart attacks and strokes, and pain.
In 2021, PMI acquired another pharmaceutical company, called OtiTopic, which produces respiratory inhalers.
Notably, it was developing an inhalable treatment for heart attacks, called Asprihale, which delivers a dry powder version of aspirin into the body to try to dissolve clots in the coronary arteries. This is ‘still in development’ PMI told Good Health. Smoking is a major risk factor for heart disease.
This reflects a wider move by the tobaccco industry into other areas of health.
For example, Japan Tobacco International (JTI), which sells Camel and Silk Cut cigarettes in Europe, has a pharmaceutical branch that produces treatments for lung cancer and heart disease, as well as for two skin conditions known to be affected by smoking – psoriasis and dermatitis.
And British American Tobacco (BAT), which makes Rothmans cigarettes, is investing in companies that are developing vaccines for respiratory conditions such as Covid-19.
BAT also owns, through its corporate venture capital arm BtomorrowVentures, up to a quarter of the Danish company PlatoScience, which is developing treatments for mental health illnesses such as depression.
Meanwhile, the US tobacco corporation Altria Group, which owns Benson & Hedges, is partnered with a company working on more efficient ways to deliver the active drugs found in ‘skinny-jabs’ Ozempic and Wegovy.
The same firm, according to researchers at the Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) at the University of Bath, also has connections with a Canadian company called Lexaria Bioscience, relating to a drug-delivery technology called DehydraTECH.
Lexaria’s website says that DehydraTECH, which allows drugs to be dehydrated and mixed with other ingredients such as foods, has been shown in early clinical testing to deliver the weight-reducing drug semaglutide (found in Wegovy) faster and more efficiently than the current system of injections.
Health campaigners are not only appalled by the idea that cigarette-makers may profit from selling treatments for the serious illnesses linked to smoking products, they also claim that when tobacco companies are allowed into reputable scientific spaces such as journals, conferences and research facilities, they use this as an opportunity to minimise or deny the harms their products cause.
Laura Williamson warns: ‘When the tobacco industry is involved with a pharmaceutical company it makes it hard to trust the research.
‘There is significant evidence that the industry promotes publication of research to reduce the negative impact of smoking that independent medical data shows is happening.’
A study of tobacco company tactics, published in 2023 in the journal Tobacco Control, concluded: ‘Research shows that in the past tobacco companies invested large sums of money in funding and disseminating research which claimed tobacco does not cause cancer, intentionally concealed the potential toxicity of their products as well as the addictive nature of nicotine, and created an international programme of scientific consultants to shape public opinion on second-hand smoke.’
The researchers, from the TCRG, added: ‘The industry has for decades attempted to create and maintain an image of scientific credibility, and its use of science to obscure the harms caused by its products and avoid unfavourable regulation is well documented.
‘It is therefore concerning to see tobacco companies attending scientific events and having the opportunity to share and promote their messages.’
The world’s biggest-selling brand, Marlboro, is made by Swiss-based giant Philip Morris International (PMI), which is getting involved in the medical industry
Nicholas Hopkinson, a professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London, and chairman of the anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health, says Big Tobacco should be kept well away from the pharmaceutical industry.
‘The tobacco industry makes huge profits while killing millions of people every year,’ he told Good Health. ‘The idea that these companies should be allowed to take this blood money and launder their reputation by diversifying into healthcare is simply obscene.’
The tobacco companies argue that they are doing important work to salve smoking-related disease, by moving their activities away from cigarettes and towards ‘safer’ alternatives.
A PMI spokesman told Good Health: ‘As of October 2024, we achieved 38 per cent of total net revenues from smoke-free alternatives, including heated tobacco and nicotine pouches.
‘Our ambition is for more than two thirds of the company’s total net revenues to come from smoke-free products by 2030.’
A spokesman for BAT said: ‘We want to accelerate our company’s transformation and help build a smokeless world.
‘As we continue to transform, we are exploring long-term opportunities beyond nicotine, making investments in a range of companies including those in the tech, science and wellbeing sectors.’
A JTI spokesman told Good Health: ‘The JTI Group has three business segments which operate completely independently from one another.
‘There is a pharmaceutical business based in Tokyo, a food business also in Tokyo, and a tobacco busines headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.’
Altria has not responded to Good Health’s requests for comment.
A spokesman for the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry declined to comment on the incursion of tobacco giants into the medicines sector.
