A New Plan To Curb NZ’s Smoking Rates And Save Tens Of Thousands Of Kiwi Lives

A multinational biotechnology company will play a major role in New Zealand’s commitment to drastically curb smoking rates by producing reduced nicotine tobacco.

22nd Century Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: XXII), announced this week it has accelerated a major seed cultivation project for its proprietary reduced nicotine content tobaccos. These tobaccos are specifically for the New Zealand market.

The seed will produce new, reduced nicotine tobaccos to comply with New Zealand’s recently passed tobacco content law.

The programme will produce enough tobacco to supply the country’s entire annual cigarette consumption.

The director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, Dr. Michael Fiore, has said “Reducing the nicotine in cigarettes to near-zero is as close to a silver bullet as you get.

The US FDA has already permitted the sale of reduced nicotine content cigarettes as “appropriate for the protection of public health”.

22nd Century’s proprietary reduced nicotine content tobaccos have 95 per cent less nicotine than commercial tobaccos used for cigarettes in the New Zealand market.

This is a level of nicotine the US FDA considers to be “minimally or non-addictive” and which helps existing adult smokers to smoke less.

“Our VLN®-branded cigarettes will be the foundational tobacco product for reduced nicotine public health policies in New Zealand, the United States, and around the world,” said John Miller, president of tobacco products for 22nd Century Group.

The US FDA recently announced plans to advance its transformative reduced nicotine content standards later in 2023. These standards seek to limit the nicotine levels in all cigarettes to a level considered ‘minimally or non-addictive’.

“New Zealand has taken the global lead in tobacco control through its new law, which will reduce the harms of smoking and improve public health and health equity, particularly among minority communities that are disproportionately burdened with the health and economic harms of smoking,” said John D. Pritchard, vice president of regulatory science at 22nd Century.

“We are excited to contribute meaningfully and tangibly to this life changing and life-saving world’s first by New Zealand, and stand ready to support other countries that are considering similar laws.”

The company’s seed programme this year will enable it to grow tobaccos at scale through 2024, in readiness for the new law, which requires all smoked tobacco products to contain only minimal levels of nicotine from April 2025.

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