Article Text

other Versions

Download PDFPDF
IQOS is not an acronym: a call to researchers and journals
  1. Andrew Seidenberg1,
  2. Becky Freeman2
  1. 1Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
  2. 2Sydney School of Public Health, Prevention Research Collaboration, Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Andrew Seidenberg, Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA; aseiden{at}live.unc.edu

Abstract

In 2014, Philip Morris International (PMI) introduced the IQOS heated tobacco product system. It has been widely reported in the media that IQOS is an acronym for 'I quit ordinary smoking'. To our knowledge, PMI has never publicly used any acronym to describe or market IQOS. Moreover, PMI has repeatedly denied that IQOS is an acronym. The acronym, which is an implicit cessation claim, has also appeared in numerous peer-reviewed publications. While the origins of the acronym are unknown, PMI stands to benefit from the publicity and associated positive connotations. It is possible that early adopters of IQOS created the acronym online, which was then picked by reporters and the research community. Alternatively, given that tobacco manufacturers have used social media influencers to promote their products, it is also possible that PMI may have surreptitiously helped popularize the acronym. Regardless of its origin, researchers and journals should stop disseminating this internet myth that promotes a potentially misleading claim.

  • advertising and promotion
  • media
  • non-cigarette tobacco products

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Footnotes

  • Twitter @DrBFreeman

  • Contributors AS conceptualised the paper and led the writing of the manuscript’s first draft. BF helped draft and revise the manuscript.

  • Funding AS is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number F31DA045424. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Patient consent for publication Not required.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

  • Data availability statement There are no data in this work