New Innovative Brands Look to Disrupt big Tobacco With Better-for-you Alternatives

- FN Media Group Presents Microsmallcap.com Market Commentary

NEW YORK, July 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Tobacco use has continued to grow steadily since its humble beginnings, fueled by the mass marketing of cigarettes in the 20th century. Nowadays, however, the tobacco industry's growth has been abated by growing knowledge about the inherent health risks of smoking tobacco. While the last century saw the rise of well-known brands like Marlboro, Camel, Winston, and Lucky Strike, the dominant trends now are smoking cessation products and better-for-you alternatives. Big Pharma companies Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), GlaxoSmithKline PLC (NYSE:GSK), and Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) have created smoking cessation products to help smokers kick the habit, while tobacco giants like British American Tobacco PLC (NYSE:BTI) have developed smokeless alternatives to help secure their stronghold on the market. Then, there is TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands (CSE:TAAT), an early-stage life sciences company looking to significantly disrupt the $888 billion tobacco industry with "better-for-you" alternatives to traditional cigarettes.

TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands (CSE:TAAT), which began trading on the CSE on June 22,has developed a tobacco-free and nicotine-free alternative to traditional cigarettes. According to the press release, Beyond Tobacco Taat-branded hemp cigarettes combine naturally-occurring terpenes and a proprietary blend of tobacco flavoring to create an experience that mimics the taste and feel of smoking a traditional cigarette.

"By replicating every aspect of the experience of smoking tobacco cigarettes, Taat cigarettes are designed to potentially provide a seamless transition from tobacco in a manner that does not feel like a transition at all," said TAAT Lifestyle & Wellness Brands (TAAT.CN) founder Joe Deighan, who is also a former smoker. "What users expose their body to changes, but the habitual motions and sensations stay the same."

More Smokers Looking to Kick the Habit

Although the number of smokers in the US reached an all-time low of 13.7% in 2018, nearly 1 in 7 Americans still smoke cigarettes. Of those 34.2 million adults who smoke, over 55% of them made an attempt to quit in 2018, yet only 7.5% were successful.

Products like Johnson & Johnson's (NYSE:JNJ) and GlaxoSmithKline's (NYSE:GSK) Nicorette and NicoDerm brand smoking cessation products have been around for decades; however, the success rate of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products remains fairly low. In 2019, Cochrane conducted a study that included 63 trials with 41,509 participants, all of which were regular smokers with a desire to quit, and used a variety of NRT methods, including nicotine patches, gum, and lozenges. The study found that just over 17% of people who combined a nicotine patch with another type of NRT were able to quit compared to roughly 14% of the people who used a single type of NRT.