ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 19, 1996 TAG: 9603190088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: LAURAN NEERGAARD ASSOCIATED PRESS
Philip Morris created a machine to watch smokers' brain waves react to nicotine, former company scientists contend - part of a rash of fresh allegations that the world's largest tobacco company has researched and controlled nicotine in cigarettes.
Affidavits by former employees, disclosed Monday by the Food and Drug Administration, contradict company executives' sworn testimony to Congress that they have not manipulated nicotine content.
Philip Morris, maker of Marlboro cigarettes, said it had not reviewed the affidavits, but it called the latest allegations ``similar to those made by others in the past.''
The Justice Department has opened a perjury investigation of tobacco executives based on the earlier accusations.
Last week the industry's fifth-largest company, the Liggett Group - while admitting no wrongdoing - settled its part of a nationwide lawsuit that claimed tobacco firms manipulated nicotine to hook smokers. And the new accounts by company insiders could help plaintiffs in the continuing lawsuit against Philip Morris and other firms.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., a longtime industry critic, said Congress should conduct more investigations in light of the latest findings, but he asserted lawmakers had ``been silenced because of payoffs from the tobacco industry.''
``It's important for the Justice Department to conduct its inquiry, because Congress is not going to do its job,'' Waxman said.
Philip Morris' stock skidded $4 a share on the New York Stock Exchange. Other tobacco stocks also tumbled.
The FDA released the statements by two former top scientists and a newly retired plant manager under a federal law that requires it to make public evidence it plans to use in its pending crackdown on cigarettes.
The scientists alleged Philip Morris built an ``olfactometer'' to give smokers precise amounts of nicotine and other chemicals. The machine, when combined with a computer and neurologists' equipment, recorded nicotine interacting with receptors in the brain.
At certain levels, the nicotine ``appeared to mimic ... addictive substances like cocaine,'' testified Ian Uydess, who resigned as a Philip Morris senior scientist in 1989.
Former research director William Farone said the machine ``might be used to determine whether cigarettes had adequate levels of nicotine and whether a particular ingredient was a nicotine enhancer or nicotine substitute.''
Uydess also told the FDA that Philip Morris cut down young tobacco plants in the 1980s because the leaves that grew back before the regular harvest contained more nicotine. Uydess said he didn't know if any nicotine-rich leaves from this ``ratooning'' were put into U.S. cigarettes.
The employees' statements contradict key testimony before Congress in 1994 by then-Philip Morris President William Campbell:
* Farone said whenever smokers told test marketers a particular brand didn't have enough ``impact'' - industry code for nicotine - the company ``would compensate by increasing nicotine levels ... in future versions of the product.''
Campbell told Congress that Philip Morris does not ``manipulate or independently control'' nicotine.
* Farone, who left Philip Morris in 1984, said that because removing the tar from cigarettes reduces nicotine, low-tar brands ``required cigarette manufacturers to deliberately control the levels of nicotine in their products.'' So they blend tobacco strains and leaves known to have naturally higher nicotine levels, he said.
Campbell told Congress that ``we do not blend for nicotine,'' and said the company never chose a tobacco leaf just because it contained more nicotine.
* Jerome Rivers, who retired as a Richmond, Va., shift manager last year, said Philip Morris employees test tobacco made from stems and other plant debris hourly to ensure the nicotine meets certain levels. If it doesn't, the tobacco is processed again and ``we might be instructed to add more burley by-products. Burley by-products contain more nicotine.''
Campbell told Congress nicotine is measured only twice: before the leaves are blended, and 18 months later in the finished cigarette.
* Both scientists said Philip Morris knows nicotine is addictive and people won't keep smoking without it.
Campbell told Congress nicotine was not addictive.
Philip Morris and the public have 30 days to comment on the affidavits before the FDA could base new tobacco regulations on them.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 linesby CNB