Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 22, 1995 TAG: 9508220098
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
\ Call it the candy that never made it: ``a confection with nicotine.''
When U.S. Tobacco gathered its top scientists in 1968 to ponder future products in a world suddenly scared of tobacco's health risks, edible nicotine was one resulting - and ultimately rejected - brainstorm. They even came up with a slogan to push snuff products: ``Tobacco - too good to smoke.''
Not until the government last week laid bare the closed-door debate did it become known how the tobacco industry fought to keep its grip on a market under growing attack.
The industry was inventive, according to some 100,000 documents released Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration. Handwritten notes and minutes of private meetings detail attempts to ``start a fad'' with moist snuff and plans by companies to carefully pluck tobacco leaves from the very top of the plant - because they contain the most nicotine.
There was great need to be inventive. As the FDA quoted one Philip Morris memo: Without nicotine, ``the cigarette market would collapse, P.M. would collapse and we'd all lose our jobs and our consulting fees.''
What sparked this fear in such a huge industry? Consumers frightened by steadily growing reports of the dangers of tobacco were starting to demand cigarettes with less tar and nicotine.
Giving them what they wanted was risky. ``The nicotine deliveries of these products may be low enough to constitute a partial weaning of the smoker,'' wrote F.J. Ryan of Philip Morris in 1975.
Like any industry under siege, the companies hunted a way out.
At that 1968 meeting of U.S. Tobacco, the largest chewing tobacco maker, officials advocated pushing new moist snuff products to counter cigarette concerns.
``We must sell the use of tobacco in the mouth and appeal to young people,'' Vice President L.F. Bantle was quoted in the meeting's minutes. ``We hope to start a fad. The theme will be: `Tobacco - too good to smoke.'''
Then a top scientist suggested creating a ``swallowable chew: a confection with nicotine.'' The formal rejection came two years later, when the company said it ``would not contemplate the incorporation of nicotine in edible products.''
But the creativity was here to stay.
The documents show companies learned to make cigarettes that delivered more nicotine in the first few puffs and to add ammonia to boost nicotine levels.
by CNB