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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 23, 1995                   TAG: 9508240030
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THEY PUFFED, THEY HUFFED...

ABC NEWS would rather switch than fight, but make no mistake: Its settlement of $10 billion in libel suits filed by two major tobacco companies does not mean the gist of its report on nicotine in cigarettes was necessarily wrong.

A Food and Drug Administration investigation comes to the same conclusion: Nicotine is addictive, and cigarette manufacturers can and do manipulate the level of the chemical in their product. And - happy coincidence! - enough ends up in the little cancer sticks to keep smokers coming back for more.

Not true, the manufacturers cried - and immediately slapped the FDA with a suit contending its findings are wrong. The best defense is a spirited offense, as the tobacco industry clearly understands.

ABC had alleged that Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds added significant amounts of nicotine from outside sources, an allegation the television newsmagazine "Day One" either could not prove or chose not to defend. It stood by what it maintained was the focus of the story, though: whether companies use reconstituted tobacco to control the level of nicotine - enough so, at any rate, to ensure that smokers stay hooked.

The manufacturers protest too much. (Who, us? Attempt to create nicotine addicts merely to protect our market?) The FDA this week released 100,000 tobacco industry documents, including handwritten notes and the minutes of meetings, showing just how urgent was the companies' need to whet people's appetite for their product once its health risks were firmly established.

Granted, many of the notes are from decades ago. In some cases, they seem the product of internal brainstorming sessions that produced ideas rejected by the companies. Still, the record belies a lot of the propaganda - and litigation - coming from tobacco's defenders.

Let's create a fad for snuff, suggested some wacky research types, and push it - especially to young people - with a catchy slogan: "Tobacco - too good to smoke." (Just makes the mouth water, doesn't it?)

And, those inventive marketeers recommended, let's be sure to use the tobacco leaves from the very top of the plants, because they have the most nicotine. Without nicotine, the FDA quotes one Philip Morris memo as noting, "the cigarette market would collapse, P.M. would collapse and we'd all lose our jobs and our consulting fees." (Not that there's any correlation between nicotine and people's desire to spend large chunks of their paychecks to suck smoke into their lungs, the memo failed to add.)

That should have been enough to light a fire under the industry's top researchers! Apparently it did. One suggested putting nicotine in "a confection." You know. Like candy. (What would have been next? Baby food?)

The company did reject this confection idea, and said it would not put nicotine in any edible product. For this, society can be grateful.

The papers reveal that the companies did learn to make cigarettes that delivered more nicotine in the first puffs, and to boost nicotine levels by adding ammonia. Would they do such a thing? How could we even suspect it?

by CNB