Philip Morris International (PMI) has won the right to sell and market heat-not-burn Heets sticks in New Zealand in a legal ruling against the Ministry of Health.
A district court judge in the capital, Wellington, ruled that although the law prohibited the importation and sale of any form of tobacco product that was not smoked, heat-not-burn (HnB) products such as IQOS and Heets – its tobacco refill component – represented a potential public health boon.
He said preventing a safer method of nicotine delivery would not be something the original drafters of the law would want to prohibit – even if the law as worded technically did so.
