{"id":23653,"date":"2026-06-10T14:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/23653\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T14:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:35:12","slug":"italy-fines-philip-morris-e7-million-over-smoke-free-marketing-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/23653\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy fines Philip Morris \u20ac7 million over &#8216;smoke-free&#8217; marketing claims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-ylk=\"elm:icon;slk:Reuters;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img alt=\"Reuters\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"171\" height=\"40\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"pr-2.5 max-w-[150px] max-h-[40px] min-[601px]:max-w-[115px]\" style=\"color:transparent;max-width:auto;max-height:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/os\/creatr-uploaded-images\/2020-11\/62e21440-2fbd-11eb-95ff-5673fa3d2f9f.jpeg\"\/><\/a>Wed, June 10, 2026 at 2:09 PM UTC<img alt=\"\" fetchpriority=\"high\" width=\"976\" height=\"670\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img w-full w-full h-auto\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/reuters.com\/b08c511ffa2daa6cefba431ccf64a72a.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>A woman poses with a cigarette in front of Philip Morris International logo in this illustration taken July 26, 2022. REUTERS\/Dado Ruvic\/Illustration<\/p>\n<p>ROME, June 10 (Reuters) &#8211; Italy&#8217;s competition authority on Wednesday slapped a \u20ac7 million ($8.1 million) fine \u200con Philip Morris&#8217; Italian unit over \u200callegedly misleading marketing for non-combustion tobacco products.<\/p>\n<p>It said it had \u200bconducted a &#8220;complex investigation prompted by a complaint from the Ministry of Health&#8221; into the way Philip Morris Italia promoted increasingly popular combustion-free products, such \u200cas heated tobacco \u2060or e-vapor devices.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Expressions and claims such as &#8216;smoke-free&#8217;, &#8216;smoke-free products&#8217; and &#8216;building\/planning\/accelerating a smoke-free future&#8217; (&#8230;) \u2060mislead consumers \u2013 including minors \u2013 into believing that the products are harmless to health and\/or less \u200bharmful than \u200bother tobacco products, particularly \u200btraditional cigarettes,&#8221; the \u200cauthority said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The evidence gathered (&#8230;) actually indicates that current scientific and clinical knowledge does not support the claim that these products are less harmful or harmless, not least because of the presence \u200cof nicotine,&#8221; the regulator added.<\/p>\n<p>Philip \u200bMorris Italia did not immediately \u200brespond to \u200ba request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>When the Italian \u200cprobe was launched in October \u200b2025, the \u200bcompany said its communication was &#8220;factual, truthful, and fully consistent with Italian and European legislation, \u200bwhich associates \u200cthe absence of smoke with the absence \u200bof combustion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>($1 = 0.8648 euros)<\/p>\n<p>(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, \u200bediting by Gavin Jones)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wed, June 10, 2026 at 2:09 PM UTC A woman poses with a cigarette in front of Philip&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14507,16565,5,16563,16564],"class_list":["post-23653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-competition-authority","tag-italian-unit","tag-italy","tag-philip-morris","tag-tobacco-products"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}