Philip Morris International contacted the institutions where the researchers worked and questioned the methods used in the study; the editors described this as a form of "pressure to suppress discourse that could harm commercial interests". In December 2017, Reuters published documents and testimonies of former employees detailing irregularities in the clinical trials conducted by Philip Morris International for the approval of the IQOS product by the FDA. In October 2020, Philip Morris launched its IQOS products in the UAE. The country had officially legalised the sale and use of electronic cigarettes in April 2019. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorised the marketing of IQOS system, which includes IQOS devices and 3 HeatSticks variants, as a modified risk tobacco product (MRTP) in July 2020. IQOS is the first electronic alternative to cigarettes to be granted marketing orders through the FDA's MRTP process. Cigarette smuggling in Africa According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Philip Morris' representative in Burkina Faso, Apollinaire Compaoré, has earned millions by participating in cigarette smuggling in West Africa. In particular, he worked with a Nigerian narco-trafficker Chérif Ould Abidine, nicknamed Chérif Cocaine, to smuggle Marlboro cigarettes into Libya. This tobacco trafficking contributes to the financing of local conflicts and passes through six countries: Algeria, Libya, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Côte d'Ivoire. Other From the 1970s to the late 1990s, Phillip Morris along with British American Tobacco, was involved in campaigns to undermine bans against smoking in Muslim majority countries by branding Muslims who opposed smoking as a "'fundamentalist’ who wishes to return to sharia law," and be "a threat to existing government as” according to leaked documents. A 1985 report from Philip Morris squarely blamed the World Health Organization: “This ideological development has become a threat to our business because of the interference of the WHO [...] The WHO has not only joined forces with Muslim fundamentalists who view smoking as evil, but has gone yet further by encouraging religious leaders previously not active anti-smokers to take up the cause." Philip Morris has refused to comment on these findings. Philip Morris International has announced an overhaul of its human rights protections of tobacco workers in Kazakhstan and 30 other countries after critical reports. The company runs an information web site outlining the health issues of tobacco. However, it has been criticised in an article in the journal Public Health Nursing as