Marlboro Will End Cigarette Sales In The UK This Decade

Phillip Morris International announced it will say goodbye to its cigarette products in the United Kingdom in the coming decade. The company has high hopes for the country to be one of the first to end cigarette smoking as part of its bigger grand scheme to move "smoke-free" after the U.K. recently announced a "smoke-free by 2030" goal.

This will include the sales of Marlboro cigarettes. Phillip Morris International is separate from Philip Morris USA, which sells Marlboro's in the U.S.

The CEO of Phillip Morris Jacek Olczak told Daily Mail on Sundau that he believes with this plan in the U.K. specifically, cigarette smoking could be controlled.

“I think in the U.K., 10 years from now maximum, you can completely solve the problem of smoking, I want to allow this company to leave smoking behind,” he said.

Even if that means making them completely disappear, which he assured during the interview.

“Marlboro brand will vanish from Britain. ‘It will disappear.’ The first choice for consumers is they should quit smoking. But if they don't, the second-best choice is to let them switch to the better alternatives," Olczak said.

This all follows as the company would like to see its revenue come from a more positive movement moving forward and the U. K.’s recently announced goal to push away smoking as well.

The brand plans to put more prevalence onto smoke-free products by 2025. The U.K. has a separate plan to be completely smoke-free by 2030.

The report by the U.K. gives details of how it plans to achieve this, along with stats on how it affects its people.

The reported reads: “447,000 households in the U.K. (around 1,011,000 people) are currently living in poverty due to the cost of tobacco; 263,000 children live in poverty as a result of income lost to tobacco, with a detrimental impact on their life chances; 143,000 pensioners are pushed into poverty by the cost of tobacco.”

The U.K., now separate from the European Union, can set stricter restrictions in order to achieve this. There are plans to only allow tobacco companies to profit from 10% sales while the rest goes to tax.

The report states that some of the more disadvantaged countries in the U.K. may not be able to achieve this goal until a later date of 2045 and that Scotland plans to achieve the goal by 2034. Dates are still being planned for Wales and Ireland.