Tobacco Documents Online

THE READEI~$ DIGEST reading the ads, you would never gurus there was any difference he. twecn one high-fihration brand and tome other brand that fired up plen- ty of tar and nicotine. Indeed, the old plain~ip, no-fiher brands were boldly tdllng smokers that filter-tips were the bunk: "Smoking mort now, but enjoying it les~? Have a real cigarette--have a Camel!" and '~emtm~er ~ow great ¢igarttte$ used to taste? Luckier still do!" To prevent misleading claims, the FTC had ruled out facts altogether. Kimner considered this quite an achievement. "In my view," he said, "this is a landmark example d in- dustry-government coSparatlon in solving a pressing problem." Said a Washington lawyer, "This is really a landmark example of how bureaucrats solve a pressing prob- lem by sweeping it under the rug." Moonlight and Roses. Once be. fore, in 1955, the FTC tried to im- pose a code of ethics on the tobacco industry with a set of rules ("Ciga- rette Advertising Guides") whkh banned all memion of tar, nicotine and filtration, "when it has not been established by competent sci. entitle proof . . . that the claim is true." Cigarette advertising there. upon passed into what one adman calls the "moonlight and roses" phase. Everything was beat/tiful, ro- mantic, soothing, innocuous. But the FTC watchdogs failed to see that these "clean" ads also were misleading--in what they did not say. For now an important develop- mtnt was influencing cigarette buy- 45 ers. As evidence linking cigarette smoking and lung cancer piled up, sales of fiher-tip cigarettes climbed until the/accounted for nearly half the cigarettes consumed in the United Slates. It seemed obvious that health- conscious smokers, wary of lung cancer and other respiratory and circulatory diseases, were switching to filter-tips for whatever protection they provided. Under the FTC rules, such heabh protection could not he claimed directly. But it was strongly implied in every ad that plugged a clean, pure, smooth, filtered smoke. Therein lay the subtle falsity and deception. For at that time most filter4ips were of little value. Doc- tors suggested that real filters - those which reduced tar by 40 or 50 per- cent--might provide the smohet with some partial protection. Ciga- rette manufacturers privately ad- mitted that such high-fihration, low-tar cigarettes were practicable, and already had been produced ex- perimentally. Why weren't they on the market ? "Ask the Federal Trade Commis- *ion," the manufacturers suggested. "We can't sdl such cigarettes unless we can tell the public how they dif- fer from other brands." Then, in the summer of z957, the Lorillard Co. jumped the gun in the fiher-tip race and introduced the new hlgh-filtration Kent. The FTC's "advertising guides" became mean- ingles~, and its first "blackout" of cigarette advertising led to a rash of new and more extravagant claims.

Facts We're Not Told About Filter-TiI

46 The Tar Derby, Now rival to- bacco companies rushed their high-filtration cigarett~ out of the laboratories and into production. Soon cigarette ads shrieked coniqict. ing claims about which brand fib terod best. Kent, Parliament, Hit Parade and King fiano jockeyed for fin place in the Tar Derby. The FTC faced a dilemma. Cer- tainly it was in the publ/c interest to kt people know how much or how htde tar and nicotine were in the ent companies, using different test mmhods, published conflicting fig. ures that were confusing and fie- quently meaningless." The obvious solution was to standardize on one test method, require all companies to use i', and to confine their claims to the laboratory<ertified figures on the brand label. In February z958 the FTC Bureau of Consultation called a twoday conference to consider s~andardiza- thou. The conference was attended by ~¢cutive~, research directors, chemists and lawyers representing all tobacco companies and some in- dependent laboratories. The coasen. sus was that a standard m~hnd was desirablep practical and available. There was even optimistic talk about "standardization within 6o days." r~" The I~d~'$ Dige~ July "57; Rmlly Fihcr." Aulmt '$7; "Ng~.inc--The Smal~.r's Eailpn~" Jaauar/ '~$; "The Cilra. r~'~¢ II~u~ry Cha~ It~ ~,~ind" July '58; "The ScIKh fo¢ '¢~;l~er' C~g~r¢l~.,+- ~+ovcm. bet 'Sg. One year later the pr~ect was bogged down in confusion. Batches of unlabeled cigarettes had been sent to all tobacco-company laboratories for testing by a specified method. Sometlmes the results corresponded; sometimes they differed by a few milligrams; occasionally the figures were ~r out of line. The lawyers of the FTC (which has no scieuti~ staff) decided that it would h~ impassible to set up a standard of testing that would be accurate throughout the industry. Tbo tobacco chemists said such testing was possible. So did the Na- tional Bureau of Standards. The American Standards Association seemed surprised that the question should even he raised. "Certainly it's passible," said Technical Director J. W. McNair. "It is naive to quibble over small variations in results. No standard or test can he ahtohtte. since no two items tested can he pre- cisely alike. For this reason rnc~ standard methods make allowances for variations that may ~xcur in re- sults from two or more laboratories." While the FTC tempacizod about te,aing, the big tobacco companies worked overtime to develop new lqlter-tlps that promig-d even lower tar delivery. The FTC was caught unprepared when. late in ]959, the new nltra-high-filtration brands blossomed forth with full-page ads and screaming commercials: "Your ~her ciR~rctte no lon&~r ~hers &est. .,. L//~ ~ltecs lea by fa," ; "Du~e- Iowes: i. ties ol all leading low,at cig~'¢~tes"; "~pring is ]ou,esl in tar~,

THE READERS DIGF.~T Iowe# m nieotln~ lightest im men- the4." While the superlatives were con- fusing, there was now clearly a sig. ulflcant range of differences among fiher~ip brands. Some offered from 6o to 8o percent less tar than the preq~7 brands. The public had a tight to know exactly what these claims meant, and the cigarette manufacturers had a responsibility to state the facts clearly. But, again, unless there was some recognized standard of testing and measure- ment, they eouldnk state the facts accuratdy and hone~Iy. Thanks to FTC s 'filter-tip black- out, there was no standard. The blackout still prevails. MeanwMe, the public continues to buy-and smoke-in ignorance. One result is that much of the progress made hy the introduction o| fihration has heen lost. Tha bin- tip brands are slugging harc~ and unathamedly to win hack smokers lost ¢o fiher4ips. The admen's ima - inatlons are producing claims whi~ nobody can prove true or false. Pall Mall, for example, now claims that its "extra length" of tobacco "travels Dige~. ~d girds sac amo~e. . . , No dry smol~ed-out taste! No ~qat fi~lerrd- out lYaooH" (Last year such adver~ tiring "gentled" and "traveled" Pall Mall to the No. I spin on the rig. arette best-seller list!) The ultra-high f~tration brands- 47

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5O tlne is uplp dighsll ffy, hut nat slgoifio actel o{ ~lob~coelop.) Life, still marketed hot seldom ad~'rtlsed, is slgui~'~.mly lower in tat, and King Sano is lower in Imth tar and nicotine. Kent has achieved uil] another reduction in tar. Duke of D~tham is up 65 percent in tar, snd t75 percent in nicotine, although it remains in the Iow4ar range. ~rhe admen are wocklng hard to plug the brand within the FTC rules. (Duke is new "The M~'s CigeretW That Meets More Inter. eSti~g Womeif'l ) Natueally, the search foe sa fee ciga- rettes i~ less intense th~a k w*s a8 months ago. The tobacco companies ask, why spend millions to impsove products when you can't tell the pobllc about the improvemcnts~ The FTC det~ion killed the com- petkive splrlt--each manufacturer's awareness that if he dldn~t come oat first with a better dgarette some comlmllor would. Con~rnemlng t~ the slowdown in research, one man- ufacturee ~y~,"The FTC pe~ctlcaUy told us that we wotlld have to invent a cigarette that could ¢us'~ lung ~l~erff The Cancer Qeestion. Neverthe- less, the cigarette maker| would be wise to remain in their ]a[aora- torks. The public has been alerted, and the demand for safer cigarettes will remain as lonll as people smoke and dl¢ of lung cancer. la Hmembet ~959 the U.S. P~h- lic Health Serdoe joined the long list of national aM international health organizations that u~.ogulz smoking as a principal cause o~ Inn cancer. BtR the S'c*~gcer, ¢3ep.eeal s~atemcnt was alto ]lard on fike tips, presumably in deference to c¢~ taio uncompromising scientists i the UfiPHS who believe thal t~ only true safety lies in abstinent, S~ientists at the SloanKetterin Institute and the American Cancel Society, while agreeing that absti nonce from smoking is the best safe guard, believe that filtration is ; partial safeguard that mast he pr~ vided for these people who canno~ or will t~t quit st'aoklng, Dr. E Cuyler Hammond, director of the American Cancer Society's (more than a million enrollees) s/x-yea1 study of American health and bah its, satys the prdiminary results thn'~ that tilter-tips offer definite bencfit~ to health, even apart from the ques lion of lung cancer. °Consider s~ch common ezra plaints as coughing and shortness c4 hreath," Dr. Hammond said rtcetxc [y. "Our study shows that these complaints occur oftener and more severely amon smokers than non- smokers, an~ among cigarelte smokers than among pipe ~nd cigar smokers. The incidence and severity increase in proportion to the num- ber of cigareites smoked daily. But coughing and shortness of breath are far less common among filter4ip smokers, and least common among smokers who stick m the high-filtra- 6~ beat~ds7 Preliminary results of the ACS stady have convinced Dr. Ham-

THE REdDER'$ DIGEST awnd and his a~iates that the ~rch ['or safer cigarettes mu~ bc encouraged, and that cigarette man- m~,elurers must be permitted or even required to disclose the tar and nlcmine contcQt of their I~oducu cn labels and in advertising. (The Tobacco Institute spokesman imme- diatdy commenled: "The suggcs- " not feaslbk. There ate no standards for measuring n~cmine or other contents of cigarette smoke.") The tobacco industry is still the virus ,has exonerating tobacco as a cause d lung cancer. This is a rather for- Iota hope, many doctors maintain. 51 Says Dr. Warren H. Cole, presi. dent of the An~rlcan Cancer Soci- ety, "Many virologists, firm in their theory that viruses are involved in human cancer, are nevertheless con- vinced Ihat regular cigarette smokers are ten times more likely to gel lung cancer than non-smokers. Actually, there is no conflict between the two viewpoints. If it is demonstrated that the viruses are a causative agent in lung cancer, the carcinogens in cigarette smoke will certainly he found to act in concert with them. Today we have no means of elimi- nating the virtu, even if it does exig. But there is a way you can avoid the cigarette mr--remove the cigarette from your mouth!~