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1226 New Smoking Ma~erial ON May 2l, Imperial Tobacco Led. made the dramatic announcement that they had decided, under an agreement with Imperial Chenficals Industries Ltd.,to build a factory in &deer, Ayrshire, to produce on a commercial scale/he tobacco substitute N.S.M. (New Smoking Material). Tt~e factory is expected to cost £10 million, to employ 200 people, and to be capable of producing 10,000 tons of the m~terial a year from the end of 1975. Those making the -',nnouncement for Imperial Tobacco Ltd. said that their original interest in developing a substitute for tobacco was predominautly a commercial one, Nevertheless, during the 7 years since that decision was made, the n0ture of the research carried out has been much influenced by concern about the relation between smokiug and health. It is at first almost repellent to envisage yet another major change in something which is so much a part of the daily lives of many people, Moreover, for those who cherish natural things the idea of replacing natural tobacco by the product of a chemical factory has little instant appeal. Obviously I.T.L. and I.C.I. have taken into account such prejudices, and despite them have decided to go ahead with N.S.M. On tl:e other hand, it is arguable that if it were not for their content of nicotine alkaloids, there would be no special reason for .~moking the dried leaves of tobacco plants in preference to leaves from plants of other kinds or to other materials of plant origin. It has lens been known that the spectrum of chetnicals that find their way into smoke during the pyrolysis of a wide variety of organic materials is similar. N.S.M., wc arc told, is derived from wood. pulp. It is a modified ccliulose, and cellulose is a major ¢onstkuent of natural tobacco. N.S.M. should then, perhaps, be viewed, not so much as a substitute for tobacco, but as tobacco-like material of plant origin from which a number of constituents other than cellulose are absent. , The Government's dccMon to publish tar and nicotine league tables was based on the conclusions in the Royal College of Physiciaus report that tar is almost certainly, and nicotine less conchMvcly, harmful to hcakh. N.S.M. by itself produces, on a weight-for-weight basis, only about a quarter of the tar produced by natural tobacco and~ of cour~c~ no nicotine, However, these characteristics do lint of thcmsch'cs give N.S,M. a uniqnc advantage over natural tobacco, because it is abeady possible by other means--e.g., use of filters, ventilaiion, inclusion of ~tcm in the blend--to reduce tar and nicotiue deliveries to any prescribed level. For a tobacco ~ub.qitute to offer the prospect of a health ad('antag¢ it would have to deliver a smoke that was qualitatively less harm(ul than the smoke from natural tobacco. According to the spokesman for I.T.L., there is .O THE LANCE:r, JUNI~ 2, 1973 encouraging evidence that the smoke from N.S.M. is less irritant to animal tissues and less carcinogenic for the skin of mice. The Govermnent has lately" set up a committee under Prof. R. B. Hth~-rra with the task (one assumes, although its terms of reference have not yet been published) of deciding which methods are most suitable and relevant for predicting the relative risks to human health of different tobaccos and tobacco substitutes. I.'F.L. and I.C.I. are pre- sumably confident that the committee will be favourably impressed by their evidence for rc/ath'e safety' of N.S.M., or at least that the com- mittee will agree that the tests t'hey have used to assess relative safety are appropriate. In fact, it is still anyone's guess as to how th: Ituntcr Committee ~vill view the problems raised by the development of N.S.M. and of other tobacco subatitutes. Obviously, the committee will be concerned lest the introduction of tobacco substitutes results in the exposure of smokers to some toxic hazard which is not present the smoke from natural tobacco. A big question for the committee to decide, therefore, will be which chemical and biological tea~a car, p,o~ide reasonable assurance that this is not the case; and this list of teats will in effect become a hurdte which all proposed substitutes will have to clear. If there were no health problems associated wkh the smoking-of natural tobacco, one could have expected the Hunter Committee to buitd the hurdle high and to be in no hurry to see any substitute clear it. But this is patently not the situation. On the contrary, it could be argued that, if the evidence for lower carcinogenicity and irritancy of N.S.M. or oliver substitutes is sound, it would be wrong to delay, because of ovcr-cautio:b their introduction into cigarettes. It is also true, as the spokesman for I.T.L. himself stressed, that no matter how high the hurdle and how many tests are carried out on a tobacco subset- trite in the laboratory, either in test- tubes or oaanimal% no-one can be quite certain th,-t it is free from toxic ¢onstltuents that are nor present in natural tobacco smoke. In the last resort, all the tests cmried ou~ by indnstry, anti all the deliberations of the I!untcr Committc% will be in vaiu if, when the day comes, ,~mokers themselves reject cigarettes cont:'.ining tobacco substitutes because they lack f',avour or pro- vide inadequate smoking satisfaction. Iiistory shows that gradually introduced changes may be ,,.cccptcd where sudden changes are not. The plan 3rill probably be, tkerefore, to introduce substitutes as dilucnts of' natural tobacco in gradually increasing amounts over a period, The 100% tobacco-substhute cigarette is. stiil a very long way off. The various anti-smoking ~ campaigns will quite rightly continue to preach the only really safe thing to do is not to smo!:e at all. But for the many people who enjoy the habit ort cannot stop ib the news deserves at least a caudcus welcome.... 500007095 PRODUCED FROM B&W WEB SITE