British American Tobacco (BAT), the manufacturer of the well-known cigarette brand Lucky Strike, created a unit that will work on development of nicotine products for those people who want an alternative to regular cigarettes as government plans to reduce smoking.

Nicoventures Ltd. aims to develop tobacco-free nicotine products, Megan Perri, a representative for London-based BAT, stated at a press-conference. The unit will employ four people and will discuss what types of products might work. “It is not for some cessation purposes. There is an unfilled need for consumers, who don’t want to stop smoking,” Perri said.

Tobacco manufacturers have spent much time trying to produce a safer alternative to smoking, including RJR Nabisco Inc.’s 1988 test of Premier, a smokeless cigarette. Star Scientific Inc., situated in Glen Allen, Virginia, declared on March 23, that a decision taken by the U.S. regulators cleared the way for it to begin selling tobacco pills. The world market for cigarettes except China, which is mostly closed to foreign tobacco enterprises, will supposedly increase by 2.5% in 2011, BAT Chief Executive Officer Nicandro Durante said on February, 24.

Various restrictions on advertising and promotion can be a great challenge to smoking alternatives, according to specialists. “Probably the main obstacle will be regulatory one. The way of thinking in much of public health concerning tobacco is quit or die, and not hazard-reduction,” Erik Bloomquist, an expert at Berenberg Bank in London, told in an interview. David Marshall, who before conducted a program at BAT that wanted to develop less-risky alternatives to regular cigarettes, will head the unit. Two of the other employees previously worked at Swedish Match AB and one occupied with smoking cessation brands in the U.K., according to information presented on Nicoventures’s website.

The U.K. tobacco enterprise and Swedish Match have lobbied the European Union in order to repeal a ban on selling snus, a moist form of snuff tobacco allowed in Sweden and other countries in the region.

Nicoventures declared that it plans for the products to assure smokers much of the experience they hope to receive from a cigarette. “The grail is a product that imitates as closely as possible the sensations received from smoking,” Berenberg’s Bloomquist stated.

Altria Inc. stated that it will try selling new smokeless products in exploratory markets throughout the U.S. Approximately a quarter of smokers expect smokeless tobacco alternatives to regular cigarettes, according to the Richmond, Virginia-based company.

BAT’s other hazard-reduction programs continue and the company’s major activity remains tobacco, Perri stated. The producer of the Kent and Pall Mall brands stated in April 2009 that it was starting clinical tests on a cigarette counterpart that might produce fewer hazards.