In recent years, electronic cigarettes (E-vapor) and tobacco vapor products (T-vapor) have been increasingly used worldwide by adult consumers, as there is a growing interest in the potential of these products to reduce the health risks of smoking. In the US, ENDS manufacturers can submit Modified Risk Tobacco Product (MRTP) Applications to the FDA for the potential reduced risks of their products to be assessed. The Draft Guidance for Industry on MRTP Applications contains recommendations on phrasing proposed modified risk claims and testing with consumers to ascertain their perception and understanding of such claims. With reference to this Draft Guidance, JTI developed five fictional reduced risk statements for both E-vapor and T-vapor products and quantitatively assessed consumers’ perceptions and understanding of them.

An online survey was performed in the UK where English is the native language, with 5,064 adults including smokers, ex-smokers and never smokers. The assessments included understanding of the messages and risk perception of the products, in association with their assigned messages.

The results overall show that most of the participants correctly understood that while E-vapor and T-vapor products are not risk free, they have the potential to reduce the risk of developing smoking-related diseases in comparison to smoking. However, a certain proportion of the participants could not distinguish between reduced exposure claims and reduced risk statements. The perceived risks of E-vapor and T-vapor were generally rated as intermediate; somewhere between conventional cigarettes and nicotine replacement therapy medications.

In conclusion, the tested statements were correctly understood by the adult test population. However results suggested that adaptations are required to some of the statements to enable consumers to distinguish between different types of claims.