Tobacco sticks are small, cigarette-shaped units filled with processed tobacco, designed to be inserted into an electronic heating device rather than lit with a flame. The device heats the tobacco to around 600°F, roughly half the 1,300°F temperature of a burning cigarette, producing an aerosol the user inhales instead of smoke. They are the core consumable in what the tobacco industry calls “heat-not-burn” products.
How Tobacco Sticks Differ From Cigarettes
A conventional cigarette uses cut tobacco leaves wrapped in paper. You light the tip, the tobacco burns, and you inhale the resulting smoke. A tobacco stick looks similar but is shorter and slightly thinner. It’s made from a different form of tobacco: dried tobacco that has been ground down and reconstituted into thin sheets (called cast leaf) using water, glycerin, and cellulose fibers. This processed sheet is then wrapped in paper and paired with a filter and a cooling element.
You don’t light a tobacco stick. Instead, you slide it into a battery-powered device that pierces it with a heated ceramic blade or surrounds it with a heating element. The device brings the tobacco to a controlled temperature, just high enough to release nicotine and flavor compounds as an aerosol but not high enough to set the tobacco on fire. A session lasts about six minutes before the device’s battery cycle ends, typically yielding somewhere between 6 and 12 puffs depending on how deeply and frequently you draw.
What’s Inside a Tobacco Stick
From the tip inward, a tobacco stick contains the processed tobacco plug, a cooling section, and a filter at the mouthpiece end. The tobacco plug is the key ingredient: reconstituted tobacco sheets mixed with glycerin, which acts as a humectant to keep the material moist and helps generate visible aerosol when heated. The cooling section sits between the tobacco and your mouth, reducing the temperature of the aerosol before you inhale it. The filter, as in regular cigarettes, is typically made of cellulose acetate fibers.
Nicotine content averages about 4.7 milligrams per stick, according to a cross-country analysis of heated tobacco products. That number varies by brand and market. Products sold in Japan tested at the high end (around 5.1 mg per stick), while those in Canada and the UK tended to be lower. For comparison, a standard research cigarette delivers about 1.87 mg of nicotine in its smoke, while a heated tobacco stick delivers roughly 1.23 mg in its aerosol. So while sticks contain more total nicotine in the tobacco itself, less of it transfers into what you actually inhale.
Major Brands and Devices
The two dominant systems on the market come from Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco. Philip Morris makes the IQOS device, which uses sticks branded as HEETS (also called HeatSticks in some markets) and the newer TEREA line. British American Tobacco makes the glo device, which uses sticks under the neo and other brand names. The sticks are not interchangeable between devices. Each system has its own stick dimensions and heating method: IQOS heats from the inside using a blade that pierces the stick, while glo heats from the outside, warming the stick through its wrapper.
In the United States, the FDA has granted marketing authorization to several Philip Morris heated tobacco products, including Marlboro HeatSticks in Sienna, Bronze, and Amber varieties. The FDA classifies these as “non-combusted cigarettes” and regulates them under the same legal framework as regular cigarettes. To be sold legally in the U.S., each product needs a specific marketing order from the agency.
Harmful Chemicals Compared to Cigarettes
Because tobacco sticks heat rather than burn, the aerosol they produce contains significantly lower levels of many toxic compounds found in cigarette smoke. A detailed chemical comparison published in Chemical Research in Toxicology found that out of 108 harmful or potentially harmful chemicals measured, 105 were either undetectable or reduced by more than 45% in the heated tobacco aerosol compared to cigarette smoke.
Some of the reductions are dramatic. Carbon monoxide dropped by more than 99.7%. Cancer-linked compounds called tobacco-specific nitrosamines fell by over 95%. Volatile organic compounds were reduced by more than 94%, and aromatic amines (another class of carcinogens) dropped by over 98%. Formaldehyde and other carbonyl compounds were cut by more than 88%. Even ammonia, which contributes to the harshness of cigarette smoke, was reduced by more than 57%.
Not everything drops equally. Nicotine levels remain comparable to cigarettes, which is by design since nicotine is what satisfies cravings. Mercury was reduced by only about 51%, and one nitrosamine compound showed a more modest reduction of roughly 47 to 57%. The overall average reduction across nearly all measured toxicants was above 91%, but “reduced” is not “eliminated.” The aerosol still delivers nicotine, still contains measurable levels of harmful substances, and tobacco sticks are not considered safe products.
Environmental Concerns
Used tobacco sticks create waste similar to cigarette butts. The cellulose acetate filters in both products are photodegradable, meaning sunlight breaks them into smaller pieces over time, but they are not truly biodegradable. The material persists in soil and water rather than fully decomposing. On top of the stick itself, heated tobacco systems also generate electronic waste from the devices and their batteries.
Some recycling efforts have been attempted. In Australia, tobacco companies funded a program through TerraCycle that collected used butts via prepaid mail labels, but the initiative was short-lived. When industry funding was pulled in 2015, the 10.5 million butts collected over two years represented a tiny fraction of the estimated 7 billion discarded annually in that country alone. No large-scale recycling infrastructure exists specifically for heated tobacco stick waste.