Recognised as a concept over three decades ago, “disruptive innovations” are new and improved ways of meeting consumers’ needs that generally sweep away conventional approaches of market-leading firms by a process of creative destruction.

The concept is an apt explanation for the way smokers, and also tobacco companies, are rapidly switching from high-risk cigarettes to a range of low-risk, smoke-free ways of ingesting nicotine. This transition is now as inevitable and unstoppable as the transition from internal combustion engine cars to electric vehicles.

The first commercially successful vaping device was developed and patented in 2003 by Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist, to enable him to quit smoking after many other quit smoking aids had failed. Vaping devices were first marketed in 2007 and began becoming popular in a few countries around 2010. However, major tobacco companies were slow to appreciate their importance. Now many major tobacco companies have acquired or developed their own vaping products. Philip Morris International, the world’s largest traded tobacco company, is a prime example. In 2014, low-risk, smoke-free ways of ingesting nicotine accounted for only US$200 million (1%) of PMI’s net profits, but this had grown to US$14.7 billion (40%) in 2024. Other traded tobacco companies are trying to catch up with PMI, but so far no state-owned tobacco company has started to transform from cigarettes to safer, smoke-free nicotine products.

The estimated number of people vaping worldwide is growing rapidly, from 68 million in 2021 to 82 million in 2022 and to 100 million in 2025. People are now vaping in virtually every country in the world, most of them people who were already smoking cigarettes. The appeal of vaping has been predominantly to younger populations, despite the fact that it’s middle-aged and older smokers who face the highest and most immediate risk of developing a life-threatening smoking-related disease.

In addition to vaping, there are now also three other increasingly popular low-risk, smoke-free ways of ingesting nicotine made by the tobacco industry – heated tobacco products, nicotine pouches and snus. An estimated 20 million people worldwide used heated tobacco products in 2021. Global demand for nicotine pouches increased from 10.8 billion in 2022 to 15.5 billion in 2023. Estimating the number of people using snus, and other oral smoke-free ways of ingesting nicotine, is much more difficult. Snus is very low-risk but some oral, smoke-free ways of ingesting nicotine, used especially in South Asia and the Pacific, are very risky. There are also nicotine replacement therapies produced by the pharmaceutical industry, but these are regarded by most smokers as relatively unattractive.

The total number of people worldwide using low-risk, smoke-free ways of ingesting nicotine is now likely to exceed 140 million, having increased from only a few million in 2010. With 1.2 billion people in the world now smoking, this means that safer ways of consuming nicotine have captured an astonishing 10% of the global nicotine market in only the last decade and a half. However, the rapidity of the replacement of deadly cigarettes by safer ways of consuming nicotine has been ignored by policymakers and the health establishment in Australia and many other countries.

However, in country after country, the more rapidly the market for safer, smoke-free nicotine products has grown, the faster the decline in cigarettes sales. The UU and New Zealand are among a few countries where governments have encouraged the transition from smoking to vaping.

Among high-income countries, Australia has been among the most hostile to safer nicotine options. Yet, its attempts to restrict their legal supply has resulted in the soaring growth of black markets. Australia will, sooner or later, inevitably have to accept the reality that many people who cannot stop, or want to continue using nicotine, will overwhelmingly obtain safer options whether these are legal or illegal.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.