title: Big tobacco, E-cigarettes, and a road to the smoking endgame.
abstract: The provision of the extraordinarily deadly product of cigarettes is dominated by a small number of large and incredibly profitable shareholder owned companies that are focussed on cigarettes. The legal duty of their managers to maximise shareholder wealth means that such companies vigorously fight any new public health measures that have the potential to disrupt their massive profit making, and have the resources to do so. Protecting the public health is therefore made a lot more difficult and expensive. We suggest that one way to counter this would be to actively design future tobacco control policies so that tobacco companies face mechanisms and incentives to develop in such a way that they no longer achieve the greatest shareholder value by focusing on cigarettes. A proper tobacco diversification and exit strategy for the shareholders of the profit-seeking tobacco industry would protect the public health by addressing the current addiction to the continuation of the cigarette market. The increasing popularity of e-cigarettes presents a particular opportunity in this regard, and we therefore suggest a possible policy response in order to start discussion in this area.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Governance and Regulation, School of Management, University of Bath, UK; Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath, UK. Electronic address: J.R.Branston@bath.ac.uk.
authors.forename: J Robert
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Branston
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada; Centre for Health Law, Policy & Ethics, University of Ottawa, Canada.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sweanor
mesh_terms: D003132:Commerce; D066300:Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems / Q000191:economics*; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D011634:Public Health; D012907:Smoking / Q000191:economics; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D019460:Tobacco Industry / Q000191:economics*
keywords: E-cigarettes; Incentives; Industry structure; Regulation; Tobacco endgame; Tobacco industry