2Firsts Interview | Adding Evidence: How Two Recent Blu Studies Strengthen the Case for NGPs As THR Tools

[Taco Tuinstra, 2Firsts] The notion that vapes can help smokers transition away from cigarettes gained further credibility in June when Imperial Brands released two new behavioral studies showing how adult smokers used its blu e-cigarette to reduce or replace combustible cigarettes.

The company’s scientists tracked adult smokers who had no plans to quit at the study outset. After one-week, significant numbers of participants had shifted from smoking cigarettes to vaping blu—with an average fall in smoking rates of almost 29%, according to Imperial Brands. The studies also found that flavors played a crucial role not only in moving smokers away from cigarettes, but also in preventing a return to smoking. Six months after the start of the studies, between a third and 40% of subjects had either significantly reduced smoking cigarettes or stopped completely.

2Firsts spoke with Elizabeth (Libby) Clarke, Imperial Brands’ scientific substantiation and engagement lead, to understand the significance of the studies for blu and tobacco harm reduction.

Interview Highlights

1. Study Design and Key Data

· The study focused on adult smokers with no plans to quit.

· After just one week, participants reduced their cigarette consumption by an average of nearly 29%.

· At six months, about 33% to 40% of participants had substantially reduced smoking (by more than 50% per day) or had completely quit.

· After the free trial, participants voluntarily purchased blu products, demonstrating real-world consumer appeal.

2. Behavior and User Experience

· Smokers rapidly changed their long-term habits after experiencing blu’s immediate satisfaction in nicotine delivery, flavors, and ritual aspects.

· Many smokers who initially had no intention to quit successfully switched to vaping in the short term and maintained usage.

3. Flavors and Product Strategy

· Flavor variety (fruit, mint, etc.) was confirmed as key to helping smokers switch and preventing relapse, rather than the importance of any single flavor.

· Imperial does not offer dessert or candy-like flavors, strictly targeting adult smokers and minimizing appeal to youth and non-smokers, reflecting a responsible marketing approach.

4. Harm Reduction and Regulatory Views

· Clarke emphasized that vaping is not risk-free, but it is significantly harm-reduced relative to smoking and represents a potential public health tool.

· Traditional nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) have real-world 12-month quit rates of under 7%, while in the blu study about one-third to 40% of participants substantially reduced or stopped smoking.

· Clarke called for regulation to be based on scientific data rather than emotion or ideology and for allowing more open communication with consumers about harm reduction.

5. Future Directions

· Imperial Brands will continue to invest in scientific research, consumer insights, and product innovation.

· There are plans to introduce more behaviorally informed blu versions and new flavors to better meet market needs and public health objectives.

Below is the transcript of 2Firsts’ interview with Elizabeth Clarke.

Surprisingly Satisfying

2Firsts: Your studies tracked smokers who initially had no intention of quitting. What led to many participants switching to blu within just a week of the study onset?

Elizabeth Clarke: We suspect many adult smokers who profess to have little or no intention of quitting smoking are actually unaware of how satisfying next generation products (NGP) like blu are—until they begin using them, and that’s why these actual use studies generate such compelling data.

Insights contributed by our participants included blu’s satisfying nicotine delivery, compelling flavors and the lack of smoke. Combined with vaping’s ability to replicate many of the ritual and sensorial aspects of smoking, many participants rapidly realized vaping blu was preferential to continuing to smoke cigarettes.

Exposure and Expenses

2Firsts: Can you explain what a nearly 30% drop in cigarette use means for smokers in terms of health and expenditure?

Clarke: While we’d urge caution in using precise figures, broadly we can state the following:

The vast majority of the existing academic literature—more than 10,000 studies—clearly demonstrate the significant harm reduction potential of vaping compared to continuing to smoke. Focusing on our own research, a previous clinical study involving vaping myblu suggested reductions in key biomarkers of exposure to harmful chemicals were broadly proportional to reductions in cigarette consumption.  

With regard to expenditure, this is obviously influenced by various factors including consumption and pricing disparities between various markets. However, vaping at similar levels to smoking broadly tends to be less expensive for consumers.

Just to add at this stage, we want to reinforce that while this is a close-to-real-world scientific study, blu is not a licensed smoking cessation product and is not marketed as such.

Holding up Over Time

2Firsts: How confident are you that these early results will hold up over time? Have you planned any follow-up studies?

Clarke: We were very pleased and encouraged to see the strong results after the study’s conclusion (week 6) were largely sustained at the 24-week follow-up. Don’t forget: the product was free only over the study’s duration, so participants were proactively choosing to buy blu products with their own money after that.

While we don’t currently have plans to revisit these specific study participants in the future, we’re extremely confident that many will continue to use blu in the future, rather than return to cigarette smoking.

We’re seeing these kinds of patterns across increasing numbers of our NGPs—e.g., our PULZE &iD in-market behavioral study in Czechia—and the positive results inspire us to further improve our future products based on our consumers’ important feedback.

Surprising Behaviors

2Firsts: Were there any surprising or unexpected behaviors observed during the studies?

Clarke: You’ve already touched on perhaps the most pleasant surprise; the speed at which many participants transitioned from smoking to vaping… and didn’t go back.

This rapid change in previously ingrained behavior was huge in terms of validating the appeal and satisfaction of our blu products to people who smoke, even if they weren’t actively seeking to quit cigarettes.

The Significance of Choice

2Firsts: Flavors like fruit and mint seem to have played a key role in helping smokers switch. What makes these flavors so effective?

Clarke: We believe these latest studies add more weight to the argument that a wide range of flavors is crucial in helping adult smokers transition to vaping, rather than the importance of any specific flavor.

Previously, research suggested many smokers started vaping using tobacco and menthol flavors before moving on to fruit, so again—access to wide range of flavors providing consumers with choices has emerged as a critical factor in assisting transitioning away from smoking.

Recent studies, including our own, suggest consumers are increasingly confident about new flavor experiences and are therefore now more likely to transition to flavors like fruit.

Once many have experienced these flavors, the traditional tobacco taste often no longer appeals.

Meanwhile, our innovations teams continue to work closely with consumers to ensure blu flavors are as flavorsome and satisfying as possible.

Responsible Marketing

2Firsts: How do you ensure these flavors appeal only to adult smokers and not to young or non-smoking audiences?

Clarke: This is a great question, and it’s something we’re passionate about as a responsible manufacturer.

We recognize it’s crucial our flavors aren’t attractive to non-smokers—including youth—so we develop and market them responsibly.

We don’t offer “baked goods” or candy-style blu flavors but rather focus on providing authentic tobacco, mint/menthol and fruit experiences.

They offer adult blu consumers diverse and flavorsome choices, while also importantly minimizing the risk of attracting unintended audiences to blu and the broader vape and other NGP categories.

 The importance of safeguarding never-smokers—particularly youth—cannot be overestimated.

Outperforming NRTs

2Firsts: How does blu compare to other vapes or cessation tools in helping smokers reduce or quit?

Clarke: We don’t scientifically benchmark blu against other vapes in this respect. However, internal testing data using consumers suggest our blu products are both appealing and satisfying, and the fact participants transitioned to blu in significant numbers during these studies bears that out.

With regard to nicotine replacement therapies (NRT), while the effectiveness of medically licensed NRT products has been substantiated in clinical studies, their contribution on a population level in real world scenarios in facilitating adult smoker cessation has been rather limited.

One paper, for instance, quotes smoking abstinence using NRTs as less than 7% after 12 months. Similar results are cited in the latest Eurobarometer report.

While it’s important to note that blu vapes are not medically licensed smoking cessation products or marketed as such, the fact that when we checked back in six months after the study was completed between a third and 40% of participants in the studies had either significantly reduced* smoking cigarettes—or even stopped completely—suggests blu is a potentially powerful harm reduction tool.

Improving Products

2Firsts: Are there plans to expand or refine blu’s flavor offerings based on this research?

Clarke: There’s a great deal of vital, consumer-centric data contained in these studies that our scientists are continuing to pore through—including understanding more about individual participants’ unique switching journeys and the way they use flavors.

You can be sure that we’ll be feeding all of our findings—especially lingering consumer pain points—into our various NGP innovation pipelines to help create even better products in the future.

THR Contribution

2Firsts: You’ve described the results as “potentially extremely positive” for public health. What role do you see blu playing in broader tobacco harm reduction?

Clarke: Imperial Brands is committed to making a meaningful contribution to harm reduction though our portfolio of NGP, and we all agree that a pragmatic, consumer-centric approach is the right way to achieve this.

By identifying and focusing our efforts on markets where our products can make a real impact—like in Greece for instance, where blu has become the most popular vape in the country and contributed to recent declines in smoking rates—we can make our own important contribution to wider efforts to improve public health by helping adult individuals who smoke and are unwilling or uninterested to quit to transition away from cigarettes.

Relative versus Absolute Harm

2Firsts: How do you respond to critics who argue vaping still poses risks or may simply replace one habit with another?

Clarke: Vaping is not risk-free in the sense of absolute harm; that’s clear.

Relatively though, vaping may have the potential to be significantly harm-reduced compared to cigarette smoking.

If—by playing our part as a responsible manufacturer—we can help ensure that our NGP transition large number of adult smokers away from cigarettes while also not attracting unintended audiences to these categories, then the public health possibilities are very exciting.

Data Instead of Ideology

2Firsts: What kind of oversight or regulatory support would you like to see for products like blu?

Clarke: To achieve better public health outcomes, it’s absolutely crucial that legislation and regulation are driven by quality science and robust data—and not emotion or ideology.

Supportive, consumer-friendly, and risk-proportionate regulatory environments that acknowledge the huge tobacco harm reduction potential of NGP and encourage uptake by significant numbers of adult smokers can help deliver significant public health wins.

Perhaps most of all, we’re seeking to be able to have meaningful conversations with adult smokers about the harm reduction potential of NGP.

After all, adult smokers and nicotine consumers don’t see themselves as patients or victims, and for regulators and public health bodies to treat them as such fundamentally misunderstands their motivations and needs—and severely limits THR’s public health potential.

Real-world Evidence

2Firsts: Why is behavioral science such an important part of your product development pipeline now?

Clarke: As consumer preferences and NGP technology evolve at pace, we’re determined to ensure the research that seeks to substantiate these products keeps up.

While behavioral science is a piece of our larger program of NGP scientific substantiation (encompassed by our scientific assessment framework), there’s certainly some exciting, novel research emerging in this area—exemplified by the blu in-market studies we’re currently discussing.

Being able to scientifically substantiate close-to-real-world THR in action using actual products and adult smoker participants creates powerful evidence and argumentation.

We hope the broader scientific community, regulators and public health bodies agree, and we’re excited about publishing the results of these studies in the peer-reviewed academic literature in due course and seeing peoples’ reactions.

Continued Engagement

2Firsts: How will these findings influence how you market blu, going forward? Do regulations restrict how you communicate these findings?

Clarke: It's true that we’re currently rather limited in how we’re able to communicate these findings to consumers owing to several factors, and that’s a shame because the data are undoubtedly compelling.

As mentioned above, more progressive regulatory environments that allow responsible manufacturers to proactively communicate their science to consumers while dispelling the wealth of misconceptions around NGP and THR would be another important step on the road to better public health outcomes.

We continue to engage with a variety of stakeholders to try and make that a reality.

Shifting Perceptions

2Firsts: Do you believe this research could help shift public or regulatory perception of vaping products? What are the hurdles?

Clarke: Each new scientific NGP study is another small piece of a larger jigsaw puzzle of broader evidence for NGP that—eventually—we’re confident will conclusively demonstrate that high quality, scientifically substantiated NGP are all clearly significantly harm reduced compared to continuing to smoke.

These latest studies certainly provide further compelling evidence that satisfying, responsibly marketed vapes like blu can swiftly transition adult smokers—and potentially help ensure they leave cigarettes behind for good.

There’s a long way to go in our journey to ensure THR and NGP are universally embraced and endorsed, but our passionate harm reduction scientists and innovators are committed to fully playing our part.

To find out more about our consumer-centric approach to NGP and the various opportunities and challenges, please read our new edition of our publication Beyond Smoke.

Next Steps

2Firsts: What is next for blu—more studies, product innovation or market expansion?

Clarke: All of the above!

Our ambition remains to provide adult individuals who smoke and adult nicotine users with a choice of high quality, appealing and satisfying NGP in those markets where we believe they can make a positive impact on public health.

This consumer-centric, focused approach is progressing well.

In the meantime, Imperial Brands will continue to invest in insights, science and innovation across our NGP portfolio to continue to create products that consumers choose to use for moments of relaxation and pleasure… and healthier futures.

*For the purposes of the studies, “substantial reductions” was defined as a more than 50% reduction in cigarettes smoked per day.