THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 25, 1995 TAG: 9507250279
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 111 lines
Secret research documents show Philip Morris tracked hyperactive Richmond-area third-graders as potential future smokers and gave electric shocks to college students to see whether it would make them smoke more, a congressman charged Monday.
One company report concluded that smokers crave nicotine more than food, he said.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., unveiled stacks of documents - apparently stolen - from the world's largest tobacco company on the House floor, contending they illustrated unethical and possibly illegal research into nicotine.
Waxman read selections from a cache of what he identified as hundreds of internal documents from Philip Morris and submitted the documents for publication in the Congressional Record. The documents detail more than a decade of research involving animal and human subjects that examined the pharmacology of nicotine, Waxman said.
``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 probe 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. . . legislative effort to block that regulation,'' Waxman said.
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. Waxman is protected legally whenever he is on the House floor.
Tobacco-state lawmakers did not immediately react to Waxman's statements.
Philip Morris officials refused to discuss Waxman's charges, saying they hadn't seen the documents. But, ``Philip Morris has always said that it studied why people smoke,'' the company said in a statement. ``Nicotine, which is an important component of the taste and flavor of cigarettes, is believed to be one of many reasons.''
The studies of why people smoke, the company said in a statement, ``. . . should surprise no one since manufacturers of consumer products want to - and need to - understand why consumers use their products.''
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.''
Tobacco companies have consistently denied that they sell their products for drug effects. Last year William Campbell, then president and CEO of Philip Morris USA, told a congressional subcommittee, ``Nicotine contributes to the taste of cigarettes and the pleasures of smoking. The presence of nicotine, however, does not make cigarettes a drug or smoking addiction. . . . Philip Morris research does not establish that smoking is addictive.''
Waxman was more concerned about the research projects targeted to young people, saying some, particularly those involving shocking college students and injecting people with nicotine, appear unethical and possibly illegal.
In one study of the ``hyperkinetic child as a prospective smoker,'' Philip Morris researchers tracked some 60,000 grade schoolers, beginning with a group of third graders, in the Chesterfield County school system in Richmond, to explore possible links between hyperactivity and later cigarette smoking.
Noting that such children are often successfully treated with amphetamines, the researchers wrote in June 1974 that ``We wonder whether such children may not eventually become cigarette smokers in their teenage years as they discover the advantage of self-stimulation via nicotine.''
That study was halted in 1978; a memo about it said that ``Obstacles presented by school systems and physicians concerned with the various `privacy acts' passed by state and national legislatures have made it very difficult for us to conduct studies using school and medical records of minors.''
Judy Davis, a spokeswoman for the Richmond schools, said that she could not confirm that the study took place or comment on it without more information. Davis noted, however, that the 60,000 figure was far greater than the current population of the entire county school system.
Other research described in the documents include injecting human subjects with nicotine, as well as studies in which college students were given ``painful'' electrical shocks to determine whether and how stress affects smoking behavior. The researchers had to halt those studies in 1972 because, they wrote, ``fear of shock is scaring away some of our more valuable subjects.'' The papers also describe extensive animal studies designed to study the drug effects and addictiveness of nicotine. ILLUSTRATION: TOBACCO COMPANY'S SECRET RESEARCH
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., produced these documents from Philip
Morris Co., saying they illustrate unethical and possibly illegal
nicotine research:
Third-graders in Chesterfield County, Va., were studied in the 1970s
for possible links between hyperactivity and later cigarette
smoking. Company scientists wrote, ``It would be good to show that
smoking is an advantage to at least one subgroup of the
population.''
Electric shocks were given to college students, in a series of
studies beginning in 1969, to see whether student smoking increased
under stressful conditions.
In 1977, the company wrote that it had reached an agreement with a
university hospital to inject nicotine into people to measure their
reactions, particularly brain waves. It was unclear whether those
studies actually occurred.
KEYWORDS: STUDY TOBACCO CIGARETTE by CNB