NEW YORK, Oct 06 (Reuters) -- A close analysis of industry documents suggests that tobacco company executives have known for decades that nicotine is addictive, and that "nicotine addiction can be perpetuated and even enhanced through cigarette design alterations," according to a report in October 7th issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
"That the industry knew of the addictiveness of nicotine and perpetuated that addiction through manipulation of nicotine is clear from the documents we reviewed," write Dr. Richard Hurt of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and Dr. Channing Robertson of Stanford University in Stanford, California. They note that these documents are available to the public on the Internet at www.mnbluecrosstobacco.com or at the Minnesota Depository.
Their article, entitled "Prying Open the Door to the Tobacco Industry's Secrets about Nicotine," is based on a review of internal industry literature made public during a 1994 lawsuit filed by the state of Minnesota against the Brown and Williamson tobacco company.
Hurt and Robertson note that after smoking was first linked to cancer in the early 1950s, tobacco executives moved quickly to create "a strategy of creating doubt and controversy over the scientific evidence." In one 1954 document, for example, an industry official wrote that future advertising campaigns must aim "to free millions of Americans from the guilty fear that is going to arise deep in their biological depths... every time they light a cigarette."
Many executives acknowledged that tobacco products were delivery systems aimed at getting an addictive drug -- nicotine -- to the human brain, according to the report. In a 1972 memorandum, Claude E. Teague, Jr., assistant director of research at R.J. Reynolds, stated that "in a sense, the tobacco industry may be thought of as being a specialized, highly ritualized and stylized segment of the pharmaceutical industry." Industry experts were aware of the potential pitfalls of drawing parallels between smoking and drug use, however. In 1969, Phillip Morris executive W.L. Dunn wrote, "Do we really want to tout cigarette smoke as a drug? It is, of course, but there are dangerous (Food and Drug Administration) implications to having such conceptualization go beyond these walls."
Instead, industry executives sought to assuage smokers' health fears by developing and marketing "light" cigarettes. In what Hurt and Robertson describe as the "low-tar, low-nicotine scam," manufacturers offered consumers "light" cigarettes. The study authors report that tobacco companies knew that in order to obtain a given blood level of nicotine, those who smoked "light" cigarettes would simply inhale them more deeply to compensate for lower delivery of nicotine. By 1980, most tobacco companies had developed products that delivered high nicotine while still qualifying as "light cigarettes" under existing Federal Trade Commission criteria.
Hurt and Robertson believe that recent moves by tobacco executives to hide or destroy important documents prove that an ongoing industry effort "to deceive the public continues today."
They recommend that legal settlements between governments and the tobacco industry do not include immunity from future lawsuits. The authors also urge that a $1.50 tax hike be added to the cost of every pack of cigarettes, with all proceeds being funneled toward antismoking campaigns and treatment initiatives "that would protect our children and benefit current smokers."
"We further recommend stringent Food and Drug Administration control of cigarette design, marketing, and promotion," Hurt and Robertson write. They also urge that "proposed legislation must not include provisions that allow the industry to continue to label and promote their 'light' and 'low-tar' products."
"Finally," they write, "the industry should be prohibited from imposing their sophisticated advertising and promotion techniques on citizens of other nations." They point out that, in the US alone, tobacco-related illnesses kill over 400,000 people every year -- "the equivalent of three fully loaded 747 aircraft crashing daily for 365 days a year with no survivors."
Responding to the article, Dolly Colby, a spokesperson for tobacco giant Phillip Morris, told Reuters Health that "basically, the public is well aware of what the Surgeon General and others in the public health community have said about smoking." Phillip Morris, she says, remains "confident that our behavior has been proper."
SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association 1998;280:1173-1181.
