Imperial Tobacco gets into vaping business, but still leading cigarette seller
TORONTO — Using World No Tobacco Day as a backdrop, Imperial Tobacco officially unveiled a vaping product to the Canadian market Thursday, saying the company is moving to help transition smokers away from combustible cigarettes to potentially less harmful products.
At a product launch in Toronto, the subsidiary of British American Tobacco (BAT) introduced Vype, a fillable e-cigarette that produces an inhalable aerosol that comes in a number of flavours and is available with various levels of nicotine, including one with none of the addictive chemical.
Jorge Araya, president and CEO of Imperial Tobacco Canada, said the aim of Vype and the company’s heat-no-burn cigarette Glo, launched last year, is to help Health Canada reach its goal of having less than five per cent of the population smoking traditional cigarettes by 2035.
About 17 per cent of Canadian adults — or about 4.5 million — currently smoke combustible cigarettes. But over the last four to five years, almost two million Canadians have become “vapers,” and many of them are either current or former smokers, Araya said.