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The company behind Marlboro cigarettes has announced that it is set to launch a new electronic cigarette this year. Phillip Morris International — the world’s second largest tobacco company — said it would be launching its Heatsticks under the Marlboro brand first in Italy and Japan.

There’s a few interesting things to note in this announcement —

Real tobacco heated. Apparently, this new product uses real tobacco which is heated rather than burned or combusted. I’m not sure how that actually works or what that does for the harm of the product, but Phillip Morris is calling it a “reduced-risk” product. They claim the use of real tobacco in the products will appeal more to smokers than e-liquids. Whether this will actually work is anyone’s guess.

Marlboro-branded . PMI is sticking its Marlboro brand on the new devices. This is actually a pretty big deal. This means they’re confident enough to risk some brand degradation on a mostly unproven product. Many analysts have claimed that tobacco companies should avoid applying existing tobacco cigarette brands to e-cigs in order to benefit from the freedoms fresh brands bring. After all, many tobacco-focused restrictions apply to any brand that holds a tobacco cigarettes even if other products fall under it. Perhaps PMI feels it’s time to really start treating e-cigs like traditional smokes.

Invested. According to the announcement, PMI has spent more than $2 billion and 10 years developing the product and will be spending another $680 million building factories for their production in Italy. Clearly PMI has invested a lot in the products and has even suggested that it will apply to sell them in the U.S. as reduced risk alternatives through the FDA. Previous e-cig ventures from PMI didn’t appear as genuine as this one.

You can read full coverage of the new product here.