
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 25, 1995                   TAG: 9507250092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

TOBACCO COMPANY RESEARCH ASSAILED

Secret research documents show Philip Morris tracked hyperactive third-graders as potential future smokers and gave electric shocks to college students to see whether stressful conditions would make them smoke more, a congressman charged Monday. One company report concluded smokers crave nicotine more than food, he said.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., unveiled stacks of documents from the world's largest tobacco company on the House floor, contending they illustrated unethical and possibly illegal research into nicotine.

``Philip Morris has targeted children and college students, the youngest segments of the market, for special research projects,'' said Waxman, who said he uncovered the documents during a congressional investigation of tobacco. ``These documents make it crystal clear that we need regulation of tobacco to protect our children from becoming addicted to a life-threatening drug."

Waxman would not release copies of the documents. When he discovered industry records during a committee investigation last year, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. tried unsuccessfully to subpoena him to disclose his source. But Waxman is protected legally whenever he is on the House floor, so he submitted the documents for publication in the Congressional Record.

Philip Morris officials refused to discuss Waxman's charges, saying they hadn't seen the documents.

Waxman said his documents prove Philip Morris knew more than a decade before the surgeon general did that nicotine is addictive. He read a 1969 company report for Philip Morris' board of directors that concluded smokers need the ``pharmacological effect'' of tobacco. Company scientists wrote that the craving was so great, it ``pre-empts food in times of scarcity on the smoker's priority list.''

According to documents Waxman cited, a study on hyperactive children as ``prospective smokers'' began tracking third-graders in Chesterfield County, Va., in 1974 to see whether they later smoked as teen-agers as a way to calm down without prescription medication. Researchers wrote that they hoped ultimately to track 60,000 elementary school children, and in 1977 enlisted pediatricians who treated hyperactive children. Company scientists wrote that ``it would be good to show that smoking is an advantage to at least one subgroup of the population."

The study ended in 1978.

by CNB