Technovation 2026: T&T’s smoke-free shift faces misinformation, illicit trade hurdles

Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

in Wash­ing­ton, DC

Se­nior Re­porter

As the glob­al con­ver­sa­tion around to­bac­co harm-re­duc­tion in­ten­si­fies, Trinidad and To­ba­go is emerg­ing as a fo­cal point for shift­ing con­sumer habits and the on­go­ing bat­tle against il­lic­it trade.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day with Guardian Me­dia at the pre-open­ing of Tech­no­va­tion 2026—an in­ter­na­tion­al sum­mit ded­i­cat­ed to the sci­ence of smoke-free al­ter­na­tives—in­dus­try ex­perts high­light­ed a sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tion oc­cur­ring with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go, as smok­ers in­creas­ing­ly piv­ot to­wards re­duced-harm prod­ucts.

“The idea of this event is to ex­plore every sci­ence that is be­hind smoke-free prod­ucts. Smoke-free prod­ucts are al­ter­na­tives to smok­ers, so they can use prod­ucts less harm­ful than tra­di­tion­al cig­a­rettes,” Raúl de León, Ex­ter­nal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er for Philip Mor­ris In­ter­na­tion­al (PMI) in the Caribbean, fur­ther ex­plained about the two-day event tak­ing place at the Hamil­ton Ho­tel in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

He shared that since the com­pa­ny in­tro­duced its smoke-free vi­sion and elec­tron­ic cig­a­rette prod­ucts to the lo­cal mar­ket in 2023, the im­pact has been mea­sur­able.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s sales da­ta, the adop­tion of these al­ter­na­tives has ef­fec­tive­ly dis­placed the con­sump­tion of 2.5 mil­lion tra­di­tion­al cig­a­rettes.

“That’s how we see that Trinidad and To­ba­go is evolv­ing when it comes to smoke-free prod­ucts,” de León said, char­ac­ter­is­ing this as a vi­tal step for­ward. How­ev­er, he em­pha­sised that wide­spread mis­con­cep­tions re­gard­ing vapes and oth­er prod­ucts, such as heat­ed de­vices, con­tin­ue to hin­der faster progress.

“There is still a lot of mis­in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing smoke-free prod­ucts,” de León not­ed, ad­dress­ing com­mon con­cerns that these al­ter­na­tives are as harm­ful as com­bustible to­bac­co.

He stressed that by elim­i­nat­ing the burn­ing process—which is the pri­ma­ry source of tox­ins in tra­di­tion­al smok­ing—these prod­ucts of­fer a less harm­ful al­ter­na­tive for adult smok­ers who would oth­er­wise con­tin­ue to use cig­a­rettes.

The pri­ma­ry goal of the Tech­no­va­tion 2026 con­fer­ence is to pro­vide both the pub­lic and pol­i­cy­mak­ers with the sci­en­tif­ic clar­i­ty nec­es­sary to dis­tin­guish be­tween smoke-free tech­nol­o­gy and tra­di­tion­al com­bus­tion.

How­ev­er, the tran­si­tion to these al­ter­na­tives in the Caribbean is not with­out sys­temic chal­lenges, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing the rise of il­lic­it trade.

In­dus­try lead­ers ar­gue that reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works, specif­i­cal­ly re­gard­ing tax­a­tion and ac­cess, play a crit­i­cal role in de­ter­min­ing whether con­sumers re­main in the le­gal mar­ket or turn to un­reg­u­lat­ed black-mar­ket al­ter­na­tives.

“Like many oth­er mar­kets that we have seen around the world, the reg­u­la­tions def­i­nite­ly play an im­por­tant role when it comes to il­lic­it trade. There are na­tions, for ex­am­ple, Aus­tralia, which has cre­at­ed a very strong tax­a­tion to this type of prod­uct.

“That has cre­at­ed an in­crease of il­lic­it trade. Why? Be­cause smok­ers or con­sumers switch from a very ex­pen­sive prod­uct be­cause of tax­a­tion, and if this prod­uct hap­pens to be il­le­gal, they switch to an il­le­gal of­fer that has a more af­ford­able price, but has no reg­u­la­tion in terms of qual­i­ty. It’s a prod­uct that does not pay tax­es, so it al­so af­fects the econ­o­my as well, and peo­ple still con­tin­ue con­sum­ing this prod­uct,” de León fur­ther ex­plained.

By fos­ter­ing a more in­formed en­vi­ron­ment, the com­pa­ny hopes to move be­yond the po­lar­i­sa­tion that has his­tor­i­cal­ly de­fined the to­bac­co de­bate, en­cour­ag­ing a prag­mat­ic shift where in­no­va­tion and ev­i­dence-based pol­i­cy lead the way.