ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 28, 1996 TAG: 9604290058
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: LAURAN NEERGAARD ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE NEW CIGARETTE looks like a regular cigarette except for a small carbon tip that heats the tobacco instead of burning it.
R.J. Reynolds attorney Charles Blixt smoked 20 Eclipse cigarettes, tapping them in an ashtray as RJR unveiled its long-promised ``smokeless'' cigarette at a closed-door meeting with four leading tobacco critics.
Skeptical, Dr. Michael Cummings peered into the ashtray - and saw no ash.
Cummings isn't convinced Eclipse is a safer cigarette, but with that ashtray, RJR got his attention. ``It was amazing to see,'' recalled Cummings, of the Roswell Park Cancer Center.
That private meeting April 12 at RJR's headquarters has some anti-smokers crying foul, fearing the tobacco giant could defuse criticism of its unusual new cigarette by co-opting anti-tobacco scientists.
But the dissension begs a broader question that divides tobacco critics: Is there such a thing as a safer cigarette?
Anti-smokers ``are schizophrenic about it,'' said Richard Kluger, author ``Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War.''
``They recognize if they could get a less toxic cigarette out, fewer people will die; but the fear is it will keep people smoking'' who might otherwise have been scared into quitting, he explained.
Some critics want Food and Drug Administration-run testing of any potentially safer cigarette, while others see ``fake cigarettes'' as a wave of the future.
``We have been looking at still more radical and less toxic approaches'' than even RJR, said Jed Rose, a nicotine patch inventor at Duke University who is testing a cigarette-like tube packed with nicotine salt - but no tobacco - that smokers would inhale.
RJR's Eclipse looks like a regular cigarette, too, except for a small carbon tip that, when lighted, heats the tobacco instead of burning it. RJR intends to advertise that Eclipse produces 90 percent less smoke than regular cigarettes, not that it's safer, although experts say that is implied.
Yet scientists fear Eclipse may give smokers more carbon monoxide, something they say RJR's own tests on 20 employees showed. And some anti-smokers asked the FDA to block Eclipse, saying it's not a real cigarette but a ``nicotine-delivery system'' that actually has more dangerous tar than some ``light'' cigarettes now sold - 2.9 milligrams vs. 1.8 mg. It has the same nicotine levels as ``light'' cigarettes.
The FDA is considering the petition.
Eclipse is not RJR's only attempt at a less toxic cigarette: In Oklahoma City, it is testing Winston Selects, with a special filter that allegedly blocks free radicals, molecules linked to heart disease and cancer.
But with final market testing of two Eclipses - full-flavored and mild - scheduled for Chattanooga, Tenn., in June, RJR is introducing it to scientific critics.
``If Reynolds can get leaders in the public health community to buy off on this thing [Eclipse], that would be a huge public relations coup,'' said Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco.
The meetings ``were simply to share this information so if they're going to be discussing it, they have the basis to do so,'' said spokeswoman Peggy Carter.
RJR first contacted David Sweanor, a risk-reduction specialist with Canada's NonSmokers' Rights Association. Sweanor calls such meetings ``like having peace negotiations during a war,'' but was intrigued by Eclipse's potential.
So he and New Jersey nicotine expert John Slade met RJR officials in Newark. Then on April 12, they, Cummings and fellow Roswell Park scientist John Pauly attended at six-hour briefing at RJR's North Carolina headquarters.
Scientists left with concerns, especially whether Eclipse could increase heart disease by putting more carbon monoxide into smokers' blood than existing light cigarettes do.
That might have happened because smokers took more or deeper puffs on Eclipse, Cummings said. Eclipse never gets shorter, unlike regular cigarettes that burn to a butt, so it's hard to know when to quit.
RJR spokesman David Fishel denied carbon monoxide is too high.
But ``they said `this is a problem, this product doesn't do everything we'd like it to,''' Cummings recalled.
But he was intrigued by data on secondhand smoke.
While most cigarettes burn more than 500 milligrams of tobacco, Eclipse burns just 25 milligrams when the carbon is lighted, so smokers' first critical puffs taste and smell like a traditional cigarette. Then glass fibers stop the fire from spreading, so inner tobacco merely heats and the smoke disappears.
It also appears less likely to start a fire, Cummings said.
Still, he had questions: Are the carcinogens in cigarette smoke still there, only invisible? Can the glass fibers be inhaled?
The scientists want human testing. Among them is David Sweanor, a risk-reduction specialist with Canada's NonSmokers' Rights Association. He is preparing conditions to present to RJR.
RJR in 1988 spent $300 million on another smokeless cigarette, but smokers complained Premier smelled funny and was hard to smoke. Anti-smokers had united to fight Premier when RJR yanked it.
Philip Morris, which has patented a cigarette that heats by electricity instead of carbon, and other companies are watching Eclipse's fate. If it fails, RJR says it will cease such harm-reduction research.
``If we're going down a road nobody is going to support, you reach a point where you can't afford to do those things anymore,'' Fishel said.
LENGTH: Long : 102 linesby CNB