Posted on 03/27/2023 4:15:37 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Marlboro parent Altria Group, the country’s largest cigarette maker, says it wants to focus on healthier products.
Relatively speaking, that is.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Altria CEO Billy Gifford said the company learned some lessons after losing more than $12 billion on its investment in vaping heavyweight Juul Labs.
It now wants to delve deeper into smoke-free — but not necessarily nicotine-free — products that pose less of a risk to users than old-school cigarettes.
“Previously, we were chasing the market,” Gifford said. “You’re constantly watching what the consumer is telling you in the marketplace, but none of them were satisfying the consumer enough to ultimately meet all of their needs and desires.”
This needs-and-desires thing is apparently at the heart of Altria’s strategic planning.
Gifford observed that people still like to schmooze during breaks. They like to give themselves a little treat or reward.
“How do you meet them in that moment and fix their unmet needs and desires?” Gifford said.
Maybe it’s smoke-free nicotine hits. Or maybe something else.
According to the Journal, Altria is exploring new (for them) products such as pouches that can be placed in the mouth for a jolt of caffeine.
It’s also looking at cannabis products.
If so, it’s a logical extension of Altria’s know-how — and addresses that goal of meeting people’s needs and desires.
I’ve long believed the cannabis market won’t truly take off until a major player like Altria takes part, bringing its marketing and lobbying muscle to addressing regulatory and tax issues.
If Altria is indeed going down this road, it would be a turning point for the company and a turning point for the cannabis market.
And anything that gets them looking beyond nicotine is a good thing.
Been on and off vaping - I started when it first came out and they actually looked like little cigarettes.
There are a couple of challenges with them, the biggest being there are no real standards. You have to match the tank to the coil and the tank/coil assembly to the battery assembly, and then there are different types of coils for the various tanks, some work better than others depending on the brand and flavor of juice. This was bad enough to sort out prior to the various governments’ lame-ass attempts to ban online sales of the stuff by choking off the shipping, which just made the quality sellers go under, but left the craptacular sellers as the only option. I know of several online sources that ignore the delivery restrictions, but all the best quality vendors I formerly used and trusted no longer sell online.
In any event, IMHO, Juul did poorly for a couple reasons.
1) They locked you into their cartridges. Yes, they were pretty widely available, but in only a couple of flavors and not many nicotine levels and they weren’t refillable. Anyone used to being able to choose from thousands of flavors and control of nicotine wouldn’t give them a second look.
2) They used nicotine salts in their juice. I’ve vaped for years and those Juuls and similar products irritated my throat something fierce.
3) The batteries were too tiny. By the time the Juul came out, the more popular batteries were multiple times the capacity of a Juul, as were many tanks/cartridges. Using a Juul meant constantly worrying about charging and having spare cartridges around because you were charging and swapping frequently. Cigarettes are ubiquitous - it ends up being easier to just grab some analogs than to deal with the Juul.
There are plenty of proven vape designs out there. I think there’d be a market for just taking the current state of the art, improving the quality, standardization and distribution, and then mass marketing it. Why they didn’t try that first always puzzled me.
Did you smoke before you vaped?
Did you smoke before you vaped?
Man? Dude? You’re begging to be sent to Gender Education Training with talk like that!
Already been, graduated from the DoD Equal Opportunity Management Institute. Had a collateral duty as Military Civil Rights Counselor. Did 50 “interventions”
I vape but didn’t care for Juul
I also started when they first came out. It took me months to get off cigs and just use vape. I tried a cig awhile back and couldn’t get any satisfaction from it
"Bailiff! Whack his pee-pee!"
Yes.
I’ve flipped back and forth. Mostly as the availability of vaping supplies has waxed and waned.
When I first started vaping, everything had to be bought online. It was a crapshoot. Later, vape shops started to open up and you could rely on the shops for recommendations. About 7 years ago we moved from a metro area to the middle of nowhere and I again had to rely on online sources. Then the online sources all dried up due to the legislation. Until recently, the closest vape shop was an hour drive, but now we have a decent place in town. Been back off the coffin nails for something like 4 weeks now. Feel much better.
I can honestly say that if vaping supplies would have been more common, I wouldn’t have had a cigarette in the last 20+ years. I enjoy vaping much more than cigarettes when I can get quality juice and supplies. The cost is about the same, although vaping has a bit of a barrier to entry. Having control over the nicotine is the real benefit to me though.
$12 BILLION on vaping????
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