New Innovative Brands Look to Disrupt big Tobacco With Better-for-you Alternatives
FN Media Group Presents Microsmallcap.com Market Commentary
NEW YORK, July 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Tobacco use has continued to grow steadily since its humble beginnings, fueled by the mass marketing of cigarettes in the 20th century. Nowadays, however, the tobacco industry's growth has been abated by growing knowledge about the inherent health risks of smoking tobacco. While the last century saw the rise of well-known brands like Marlboro, Camel, Winston, and Lucky Strike, the dominant trends now are smoking cessation products and better-for-you alternatives. Big Pharma companies Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), GlaxoSmithKline PLC (NYSE:GSK), and Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) have created smoking cessation products to help smokers kick the habit, while tobacco giants like British American Tobacco PLC (NYSE:BTI) have developed smokeless alternatives to help secure their stronghold on the market. Then, there is TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands (CSE:TAAT), an early-stage life sciences company looking to significantly disrupt the $888 billion tobacco industry with "better-for-you" alternatives to traditional cigarettes.
TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands (CSE:TAAT), which began trading on the CSE on June 22,has developed a tobacco-free and nicotine-free alternative to traditional cigarettes. According to the press release, Beyond Tobacco™ Taat-branded hemp cigarettes combine naturally-occurring terpenes and a proprietary blend of tobacco flavoring to create an experience that mimics the taste and feel of smoking a traditional cigarette.
"By replicating every aspect of the experience of smoking tobacco cigarettes, Taat cigarettes are designed to potentially provide a seamless transition from tobacco in a manner that does not feel like a transition at all," said TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands (TAAT.CN) founder Joe Deighan, who is also a former smoker. "What users expose their body to changes, but the habitual motions and sensations stay the same."
More Smokers Looking to Kick the Habit
Although the number of smokers in the US reached an all-time low of 13.7% in 2018, nearly 1 in 7 Americans still smoke cigarettes. Of those 34.2 million adults who smoke, over 55% of them made an attempt to quit in 2018, yet only 7.5% were successful.
Products like Johnson & Johnson's (NYSE:JNJ) and GlaxoSmithKline's (NYSE:GSK) Nicorette and NicoDerm brand smoking cessation products have been around for decades; however, the success rate of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products remains fairly low. In 2019, Cochrane conducted a study that included 63 trials with 41,509 participants, all of which were regular smokers with a desire to quit, and used a variety of NRT methods, including nicotine patches, gum, and lozenges. The study found that just over 17% of people who combined a nicotine patch with another type of NRT were able to quit compared to roughly 14% of the people who used a single type of NRT.
TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands (TAAT.CN) is looking to address the need for an effective NRT by engineering the user experience to replicate every aspect of smoking traditional cigarettes, including identical packaging format, a scent that matches natural tobacco, and an enhanced volume of exhaled smoke that resembles smoke exhaled from a tobacco cigarette.
Informal trials conducted by TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands (TAAT.CN) have shown that by duplicating those attributes, as well as satisfying the "hand to mouth" habit, users found no significant experiential differences between Taat's Beyond Tobacco™ cigarettes and legacy tobacco products. Beyond Tobacco™ cigarettes are offered in "Original" and "Menthol" flavors, which could help the company capture the 19.5 million menthol cigarette smokers in the US.
Smokers have also begun turning to smokeless tobacco products and vaporizers in an effort to quit cigarettes. In order to combat dropping cigarette sales, tobacco industry giant British American Tobacco PLC (NYSE:BTI) has developed tobacco heating products (THP) and also added popular e-cigarette company Vype to its portfolio through the acquisition of Reynolds American in 2017.
Of course, it's important to note the e-cigarettes have not been approved by the FDA as a quit smoking aid and the products have faced severe backlash in the last year due to vape-related deaths and illnesses.
Demand for Smoking Cessation Products Continues to Grow
The smoking cessation market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 14.86% to reach $42 billion by 2024 compared to $18.4 billion in 2018, as more smokers look to kick the habit. At present, some of the products on the market include transdermal nicotine patches, nicotine lozenges and gum, oral inhalers, nasal sprays, and prescription medications like Pfizer's (NYSE:PFE) Chantix and GlaxoSmithKline's (NYSE:GSK) Zyban.
Interestingly, Zyban was originally created by GlaxoSmithKline to treat depression, as was Pfizer's Chantix. However, both prescription medications were later found to be effective as an aid for quitting smoking and were handed FDA approval.
In recent years, hemp cigarettes have been studied to gauge their effectiveness as a smoking cessation treatment. Although there is still limited research on the use of hemp cigarettes as a smoking cessation therapy, a handful of studies and surveys have generated encouraging results. A 2019 survey conducted by Brightfield Group of more than 5,000 hemp users in the US showed that 24% of hemp users said they have used it to help quit smoking, typically replacing cigarettes with either hemp or vaping, and 41% of quitters have entirely replaced tobacco with hemp.
Another randomized, double–blind crossover study of 30 people was conducted in 2018 at a UK laboratory to investigate the effects of hemp during nicotine withdrawal. According to the results, hemp reversed attentional bias to cigarette cues in abstinent smokers, such that it was no longer significantly different from attentional bias when they were satiated.
Industrial hemp became legalized in the US as part of the 2018 Farm Bill, so it's likely that there will be more research conducted around its potential use as an NRT down the line. In the meantime, TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands' (TAAT.CN) nicotine- and tobacco-free Beyond Tobacco™ cigarettes promise to offer a better-for-you alternative to smoking traditional cigarettes.
For more information on TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands' (CSE:TAAT), click here.
Disclaimer: Microsmallcap.com (MSC) is the source of the Article and content set forth above. MSC owns and operates Stockstreetnews.com. References to any issuer other than the profiled issuer are intended solely to identify industry participants and do not constitute an endorsement of any issuer and do not constitute a comparison to the profiled issuer. FN Media Group (FNM) is a third-party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated with MSC or any company mentioned herein. The commentary, views and opinions expressed in this release by MSC are solely those of MSC and are not shared by and do not reflect in any manner the views or opinions of FNM. Readers of this Article and content agree that they cannot and will not seek to hold liable MSC and FNM for any investment decisions by their readers or subscribers. MSC and FNM and their respective affiliated companies are a news dissemination and financial marketing solutions provider and are NOT registered broker-dealers/analysts/investment advisers, hold no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security.
The Article and content related to the profiled company represent the personal and subjective views of the Author (MSC), and are subject to change at any time without notice. The information provided in the Article and the content has been obtained from sources which the Author believes to be reliable. However, the Author (MSC) has not independently verified or otherwise investigated all such information. None of the Author, MSC, FNM, or any of their respective affiliates, guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any such information. This Article and content are not, and should not be regarded as investment advice or as a recommendation regarding any particular security or course of action; readers are strongly urged to speak with their own investment advisor and review all of the profiled issuer's filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission before making any investment decisions and should understand the risks associated with an investment in the profiled issuer's securities, including, but not limited to, the complete loss of your investment. FNM was not compensated by any public company mentioned herein to disseminate this press release but was compensated twenty five hundred dollars by MSC, a non-affiliated third party to distribute this release on behalf of TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands.
FNM HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE.
This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and MSC and FNM undertake no obligation to update such statements.
Media Contact:
FN Media Group, LLC
[email protected]
+1(561)325-8757
SOURCE Microsmallcap.com
![](https://rt.prnewswire.com/rt.gif?NewsItemId=IO55422&Transmission_Id=202007070845PR_NEWS_USPR_____IO55422&DateId=20200707)
Share this article