Big Tobacco turns to rooibos tea to counter upcoming ban

investing.com:

By Emma Rumney

LONDON (Reuters) — Big Tobacco firms including British American Tobacco (NYSE:BTI) are selling heat sticks made from nicotine-infused substances such as rooibos tea, countering an incoming European Union ban on flavoured heated tobacco products.

While the sticks mark a new way to inhale the addictive drug, health experts warn that their safety is unclear.

The industry has produced «heat-not-burn» sticks containing tobacco for years, aiming to avoid the toxic chemicals released via combustion.

These «reduced risk» products, which are placed in a device to heat them, have helped offset falling demand for traditional cigarettes due to rising health awareness and heavy taxation in some markets.

British American Tobacco (BAT (LON:BATS)) has now gone a step further, launching a version of its sticks containing nicotine-infused Rooibos tea instead of tobacco in nine European markets, including Germany and Greece. The company plans to roll the product out globally, it told Reuters.

The move provides «adult nicotine users and smokers with the widest possible range of reduced-risk products,» BAT said in a statement.

There may, however, be as yet unknown risks associated with inhaling the tea, researchers warned.

«Anything that burns or is vaporised… and inhaled into the lungs, probably will cause some effects,» said Erikas Simonavicius, a research associate at King's College London.

Tobacco companies have yet to publish any research showing the health implications of rooibos or other zero-tobacco sticks, Simonavicius added.

BAT, the first big tobacco player to say what its zero-tobacco sticks are made from, declined to say whether it had conducted such research.

Rival Philip Morris International (NYSE:PM) (PMI)