Tobacco Documents Online

Copyright 1993 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., All rights reserved. • ABC NEWS SHOW: PRIMETIME LIYE. February 25,,1393 LENGTH: 8228 words HEADLINE: Smoke and Mirrors; More Washington Waste; My Child BODY: ANNOUNCER: February 25th, 1993. SAM DONALDSON, ABC News: [voice-over] Tonight, a PrimeTime investigation. Dr. ANTHONY COLUCCI: Quit this lying! Quit telling this lie. DONALDSON: [voice-over] The charge - for 40 years the tobacco industry has conspired to obscure the truth about smoking and health. 1 st TOBACCO COMPANY SPOKESMAN: It has not been established that cigarette smoking- 2nd TOBACCO COMPANY SPOKESMAN: The bottom line is that we simply don't know- 3rd TOBACCO COMPANY SPOKESMAN: It is not a closed case. KENNETH WARNER: This is one of the most reprehensible examples of corporate behavior gone wrong that has ever existed in the history of this country. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Also, a mystery - why a cigarette that might have saved lives was deliberately kept from consumers. [interviewing] They wanted to see if they could develop a safe cigarette. JAMES MOLD: Correct. DONALDSON: [voice-over] All right, what happened? Mr. MOLD: We did. ANNOUNCER: From ABC News, with anchors Diane Sawyer, Sam Donaldson, chief correspondent Chris Wallace, Judd Rose, Jay Schadler, Sylvia Chase, John Quinones, and Renee Poussant, this is PrimeTime. [Commercial break] Smoke and Mirrors , ANNOUNCER: PrimeTime. Now from Washington, Sam Donaldson.

DONALDSON: Good evening and welcome. Diane Sawyer's on assignment. We'll tell you more abbut that later. Tonight we begin with a look at smoking and health and how the tobacco companies have worked over the years to confuse the public on this vital issue. Now, let me say right up front that I personally have been crusading against smoking for more than 20 years. And believe me, we ex-smokers can be worse than reformed drunks. I am not unbiased when it comes to believing the government warning carried on every cigarette pack about the hazards of smoking. But none of us here at PrimeTime had prejudged the subject of our report tonight. We conducted a four-month-long investigation which found that for 40 years the tobacco companies have waged a carefully orchestrated campaign to hide thelnith in. order to fend off regulation and lawsuits and keep the profits pouring in. It all began, we discovered, back in the early 1950s. [voice-over] Worried about smoking? Listen to the tobacco indus over the years and you won't be quite so worried.` list TOBACCO COMPANY SPOKESMAN: It has not been established that cigarette smoking- 2nd TOBACCO COMPANY SPOKESMAN: The bottom line is that we simply don't know- 3rd TOBACCO COMPANY SPOKESMAN: It is not a closed case. The fact is- 4th TOBACCO COMPANY SPOKESMAN: I don't know that they're harmful or harmless. What I'm saying is that- I st TOBACCO COMPANY SPOKESMAN: When the answers are found, I think this industry is going to come out all right. Dr. ANTHONY COLUCCI: Quit this lying! Quit telling this lie! It's over. It's 1992. Would you please come into the 20th century before we get to the 21st, for God's sake? DONALDSON: [voice- over] Meet Dr. Anthony Colucci, the highest-ranking tobacco insider ever to break ranks with the industry's line. Colucci, a toxicologist, was the director of smoking and health at the RJ. Reynolds tobacco company, the country's second largest. His story is explosive. [interviewing] But they know the truth. Dr. COLUCCI: Of course they know the truth. DONALDSON: Cigarettes kill you. Dr. COLUCCI: They knew it back then. Yes, they kill you. DONALDSON: [voice-over) The year was 1953. Ike was in the White House and more than 50 million Americans smoked cigarettes. But it was also a time when major studies linking cigarettes and lung cancer first made national news. WALTER WINCHELL: Every one of the studies reported that there is an association between excessive smoking and cancer of the lung. DONALDSON: [voice-over] And the cigarette giants, according to their

public-relations company, were "frantically alarmed." [on camera] In a panic, they gathered here at the Plaza Hotel in December, 1953, to plot their strategy, one drafted bq the public-relations firm of Hill and Knowlton. According to the master plan, the key to the strategy would be the creation of a supposedly independent research council, ostensibly to pursue the facts about smoking and health. [voice-over] In January, 1954, with much fanfare, the cigarette companies announced the formation of a Tobacco Research Council, placing full-page ads in more than 400 newspapers which said the tobacco industry considered their customers"health "paramount to every other consideration" of their business. But over the years the Council for Tobacco Research, or CTR, appears to have made its paramount business providing the scientific cover for the industry's line that there is no conclusive proof that smoking causes illness or death, a line Dr. Colucci says the industry knew to be untrue. Dr. COLUCCI: Here's what was told to me when I got to Reynolds Tobacco Company in 1967. "If any of the tobacco company executives ever come and visit you, don't mention the word cancer' to them." DONALDSON: You were told by an official of the company- Dr. COLUCCI: Yes, my supervisor. DONALDSON: -never to mention cancer when top company officials came by? Dr. COLUCCI: Absolutely. It was verboten. It was absolutely forbidden. So now they can honestly go up before Congress, before anybody they want, in a court. of law, and say, "Nobody ever told me it caused cancer." DONALDSON: [voice-over] In 1968, Dr. Colucci was picked to head a team of R.J. Reynolds scientists investigating the effects of smoking on the lung. He says the research was making progress. [interviewing] You were getting close to a mechanism that would have demonstrated conclusively that what? Dr. COLUCCI: That cigarettes destroy lung tissue, how they destroy lung tissue, how they predispose it to chronic bronchitis and emphysema and ultimately to cancer. DONALDSON: [voice-over] By March of 1970, Colucci says, his team was near a breakthrough. Dr. COLUCCI: And one day we just all were called into a room and fired. DONALDSON: Why? Dr. COLUCCI: Because_they didn't w now the truth. I mean, basically, I think, it's just sort of a conspiracy of dismfoirnma~ri: So how can you carry on a conspiracy of disinformation when sitting:m our back pocket or in your laboratory, as a matter of fact, or in the minds of your scientists, Sam, is all this data? Just pretend it doesn't exist. WILLIAM SIMMONS: There were all kinds of rumors going around. I have seen no evidence to that effect, that we were dismissed because we had found anything that was damaging or that we were on the brink of finding anything that was damaging.

DONALDSON: [voice-over] Dr. William Simmons, a biochemist, is the current director of smoking and health at R.J. Reynolds. He was part of Dr. Colucci's '60s research team and he says the unit was shut down because of a company reorganization, plus it was more efficient to do the research outside. Mr. SIMMONS: Every company, any company, wants to make a profit. They're in business to make a profit. But they also have a responsibility to their customers to produce the best product that they can with regard to all of the allegations that you're talking about, and this company is highly concerned with that. PLANT MANAGER: Sam, this is where the process of making cigarettes- DONALDSON: [voice-over] To understand why R.J. Reynolds says it's so concerned, you only have to visit their plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where they make Winston, Salem, Doral, and Camel cigarettes. That's money you see coming off the assembly Gne, big money. This one machine alone makes 8,000 cigarettes per minute. On this four-acre factory floor Reynolds makes 300 million - yes, 300 million - cigarettes a day, just one plant of just one tobacco company. Last year Americans spent an estimated $47.3 billion on cigarettes, which may help explain why, despite the hazard labels on its own cigarette packs, R.J. Reynolds insists there's still no proof that cigarettes kill. [interviewing] Let me read you this warning. It says, "Surgeon General's warning: Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and may complicate pregnancy." Mr. SIMMONS: Yes, sir, that's true. DONALDSON: It doesn't say smoking might do this. It says it does it. Mr. SIMMONS: I don't think that it has been proved to cause these diseases. Now, I agree that it's a very strong risk factor for certain human diseases. DONALDSON: Like what, cancer? Mr. SIMMONS: Lung cancer, emphysema, and cardiovascular disease. DONALDSON: You can't get worse than that, can you? Mr. SIMMONS: Well, they're certainly terrible diseases, but at the same time, the scientific evidence is still lacking that shows causation. Dr. COLUCCI: Given all the compelling evidence that's out there, I cannot believe, in my heart of hearts, that anyone with two brain cells to rub together, regardless of what their position is in the tobacco industry, believes that, because it's counterintuitive and it's a lie. DONALDSON: [voice-over] To back up his contention that the company wasn't trying to hide anything, Dr. Simmons showed us that the company had retained notebooks from the 1960s research work, but he wouldn't let us look inside them, explaining the information was a company trade secret. Whether they shed any light on Colucci's contention that the unit was shut down because the company didn't want to know the truth, a contention Simmons disputes, we couldn't tell.

But two other former R.J. Reynolds scientists who were also let go back in 1970 have stepped forward in interviews with PrimeTime to back up Colucci. JOSEPH BUMGARNER: As far as saying that he is twisting the story- no way. I saw the same thing that- DONALDSON: [voice-over] Joseph Bumgarner was Colucci's principal assistant. [interviewing] But you're convinced that for many years these companies have known that their product causes serious injury to health. Mr. BUMGARNER: Beyond a shadow of a doubt. ROBERT BRUCE: I think over the years they have just continuously withheld the truth and not told the American public- DONALDSON: [voice- over] Scientist Dr. Robert Bruce actually was re-hired by R.J. Reynolds for a time in the 1980s to help company lawyers defend against tobacco lawsuits. [interviewing] So they've maintained a tissue of lies for decades and now they're caught in the web. Mr. BRUCE: It certainly is a web of deception. It'd probably make a black widow jealous. DONALDSON: [voice-over] At the web's center, the Council for Tobacco Research. Dr. COLUCCI: The real purpose of the Council for Tobacco Research, in my opinion, is to develop studies and to develop strategic databases which allow the industry to continue to apply its smoke and mirrors. MARK EDELL: The Council for Tobacco Research was a fraud. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Attorney Mark Edell may be public enemy number one as far as the tobacco companies are concerned. In bringing a number of lawsuits against the industry over the years, he has uncovered internal documents that are highly damaging to the Council's credibility. Mr. EDELL: CTR was a front. It was a shield and it wasn't calculated to lead to any relevant information on cigarette smoking and health. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Consider these documents from the industry's confidential files. Item - CTR memorandum which says the program has "carried its fair share of the public relations load in providing materials to stamp out the brush fires as they arose." Item - Hand-written notes belonging to the former chief executive of Lorilard which say, "CTR is the best and cheapest insurance the tobacco industry can buy and without it the industry ... would be dead." Item - The former vice president of the Tobacco Institute, the industry's trade group, boasts that the "holding strategy" over the years has been "brilliantly conceived and executed ... creating doubt about the health issue without actually denying it." Evidence like this led'federal judge H. Lee Sarokin in a written opinion to state, "the tobacco industry may be the king of concealment and disinformation." Last year, after three attempts, the industry succeeded in having Judge Sarokin removed from hearing a pending tobacco case. The appeals court said it found no bias on his part, but wanted to avoid the appearance of partiality. The judge had written that a jury might reasonably

find that the cigarette companies had engaged in an "industry-wide conspiracy ... vast in its scope, devious in its purpose and devastating in its results." KENNETH WARNER: This is one of the most reprehensible examples of corporate behavior gone wrong that has ever existed in the history of this country. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Dr. Kenneth Warner is a professor of public health at the University of Michigan and a leading expert on the tobacco industry. Mr. WARNER: The fact is that the public as a whole underestimates the risk of smoking, and smokers in particular underestimate that risk and believe that it doesn't apply to them personally. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Professor Warner believes consumers don't necessarily understand the risks because the industry has spent 40 years and untold billions raising doubts about the dangers. Mr. WARNER: Now, today they're spending over $4 billion a year - that's, you know, that's well over $100 a second [snapping his fingers], just like that, they're spending $100 very second - trying to convince people that smokers are "alive with pleasure" or that smokers are youthful, healthy, vigorous people. DONALDSON: [voice-over] That's what the ads have always tried to do. People want to be like the models. Consider Janet Sackman, a young beauty discovered more than 45 years ago on a New York beach, who modeled for Lucky Strike cigarettes. "Smoke a Lucky," the ad says, "to feel your level best." Meet Janet Sackman today. [interviewing) At one time, you were a walking advertisement for cigarettes. What are you a walking advertisement for today? JANET SACKMAN: Cancer. DONALDSON: [voice- over] After smoking 33 years, Sackman has lost her larynx and part of a lung to cancer. And then there are the famous Marlboro ads. In the mid-1970s, Philip Morris attempted to suppress a British television documentary about how real cowboys and westerners were dying of smoking-related diseases. COWBOY: [Thames Television] Well, it's hard to describe, except when the pain is actually with you. I just have to stop and gasp for breath. WAYNE McLAREN: I'm here today to add my voice to- DONALDSON: [voice-over] But Philip Morris couldn't stop one of its cowboy models from speaking out. Mr. McLAREN: If you have an IQ approaching that of a hamster, you've got to be able to believe that it's going to kill you, or it can kill you. O DONALDSON: [voice-over] Cowboy stunt man Wayne McLaren smoked for 30 years ~ and ~ modeled for Marlboro in 1984. Three years ago he was diagnosed with lung cancer. r Mr. McLAREN: I didn't know at the beginning really all the ramifications from ~ smoking that could happen to someone, but now I know. You know, but it's a N little late now. M

Ms. SACKMAN: ['to patient] Marcella, how many years did you smoke? 1 st PATIENT: Thirty years. Ms. SACKMAN: Thirty years. 2nd PATIENT: Thirty years.. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Today Janet Sackman teaches other former smokers who have lost their larynxes to speak. . Ms. SACKMAN: I want people to know that you could get this and you could get worse from smoking. Very few people get away with it. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Marlboro man Wayne McLaren didn't. He died of lung and brain cancer last July at the age of 51. The federal Centers for Disease Control estimatcd that in 1988 cigarette smoking killed some 434,000 Americans, but to this day the tobacco companies' line is- well, listen to Dr. Simmons of R.J. Reynolds. Mr. SIMMONS: We don't know whether that number is real or not. DONALDSON: If it's not 434,000 roughly, what number do you use? Mr. SIMMONS: No one knows what that number may or may not be. DONALDSON: Zero? Mr. SIMMONS: That's the whole point. DONALDSON: Zero? Mr. SIMMONS: We don't know that. We don't know- DONALDSON: Are you suggesting to our audience that maybe no one has died from smoking cigarettes in the United States in 1988? Mr. SIMMONS: I don't know. DONALDSON: If the tobacco companies still say they don't know whether their product kills anyone, how credible is their contention that they are doing everything they can to find out? That story when we come back. ANNOUNCER: Still ahead, the super-collider. Already controversial, now it may cost hundreds of millions more than expected. Also, should people like this lose their children because they're physically disabled? And next, part two of our tobacco investigation, a potentially life-saving product that was purposely kept off the market. - DONALDSON: Why would the legal department want to kill a project that would develop a safe cigarette?

ANNOUNCER: When PrimeTime continues. [Commercial break] DONALDSON'. This is the story of a new cigarette that isn't on the market. In some ways, what you're about to see makes the tobacco companies efforts over the years to suggest they are working on the health issue by introducing filters- NARRATOR: [Kool Cigarettes commercial] Snow-fresh filter Kool- DONALDSON: -by marketing low-tar products seem only efforts at deception, rather than sincere measures to protect smokers. If the tobacco companies have known for years about the danger of their product, did they do nothing to attempt to fix the problem? Well, consider what happened here at the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company in Durham, North Carolina, where a revolutionary new cigarette that might have been safer was deliberately withheld from the market. [voice-over] Dr. James Mold, who now lives in retirement near Durham, went to work for Liggett, maker of Chesterf eld, Eve, Lark, and L&M cigarettes, back in 1955. Working in this research building, he was assigned to identify the ingredients in cigarette smoke that caused cancer in lab mice.JAMES MOLD: Once we found what the materials present were that were causing the cancers on mice skin, our next task was to say, "Well, what do we do about this?" DONALDSON: And the company executives were all for this at that point? Mr. MOLD: Everything was, "Go ahead," yes. DONALDSON: They wanted to see if they could develop a safe cigarette. Mr. MOLD: Correct. DONALDSON: All right, what happened? Mr. MOLD: We did. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Dr. Mold spent 25 years working on the "XA" project, developing a different cigarette, specially treated with chemicals that he says caused no cancer in lab animals. [interviewing] So by 1980 you had developed a cigarette that would be safe to smoke. Well, why don't I find this in the stores today? Mr. MOLD: Well, that's a good question. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Dr. Mold says when the XA cigarettes were finally ready for production and marketing in 1978, company lawyers stepped in and scuttled the project. [interviewing] Why would the legal department want to kill a project that would develop a safe cigarette? Mr. MOLD: They were afraid that putting such a cigarette out would reflect on the products that they had been putting out and for which they had been under litigation. I DONALDSON: So that rather than develop a safe cigarette that would result in this kind of adverse courtroom situation, they were willing to continue to

market a cigarette that killed people? - Mr. MOLD: Well, that's putting it bluntly, but I guess it's correct. DONALDSON: Well, how would you put it, Doctor? Mr. MOLD: I don't know how else to put it. _ Mr. WARNER: They have made a lot of profit and it has cost an enormous number of lives. DONALDSON: [voice-over] University of Michigan tobacco expert Kenneth Warner. Mr. WARNER: To produce a less dangerous product means you're acknowledging that your product is dangerous, your current product is dangerous, and they couldn't do that, didn't want to do that. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Liggett told PrimeTime in a statement it couldn't comment on all this specifically because of pending litigation. But in the past the company has cited various reasons for scuttling the project, including taste problems and unresolved questions about health effects. But an internal Liggett document introduced in a court case states, "Any domestic activity will increase risk of cancer litigation on existing products. U.S. manufacture for export will be less risky." In the end, the company elected to continue to market their existing cigarettes and no one else has stepped forward publicly to buy Liggett's patent on the XA. [on camera] Instead, the companies have spent millions fighting lawsuits filed against them and they've been amazingly successful. Over the years, in more than 300 cases, they haven't paid out a penny. And why is that? Well, for one thing, ever since 1966 when the surgeon general's report first came out, courts and juries have ruled that people smoke at their own risk. After all, if it says right on the pack that smoking causes lung cancer, don't come asking for money because you ignored the warning. But Dr. Colucci says there are other reasons why the companies have been so successful. [interviewing] How do you defend against the obvious? Dr. COLUCCI: You set a level of scientific proof that's unachievable. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Colucci should know. He was brought back in 1980 to help Reynolds lawyers devise courtroom defense strategies, which he did until they parted ways again in 1992. Dr. COLUCCI: What you do is, you say, "In order for you to prove to me that cigarettes killed this person, these are the scientific hurdles you're going to go through. You must do this, you must do this, you must do' = knowing full well - and what a caper - knowing full well that science can never achieve that level. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Colucci won't talk specifics, saying that would violate confidentiality agreements he signed with R.J. Reynolds. But in general, he says, the approach centers on suggesting the cancer or illness may have been caused by something else- say, hereditary factors, diet or, as the company sometimes suggests, air pollution. Dr. Colucci says cigarette smoke is 200,000 times more potent in causing lung cancer than air pollution. ~:.rv+fJ

Dr. COLUCCI: It's possible. Anything-is possible, Sam. But 200,000 to 1? Forget it. DONALDSON: [voice-over] Still, when presented by the industry's courtroom team, such tactics work. Attorney Mark Edell has come the closest to beating the companies in a lawsuit in the case of Rose Cipollone. Mr. EDELL: Rose Cipollone, during her deposition, said if it really had been proven that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer, do you think the tobacco companies would have sold it and do you think the government would have let them sell it? DONALDSON: [voice-over] Rose Cipollone, the New Jersey housewife with lung cancer who sued three cigarette companies, died before the trial ended, but the jury awarded her husband $400,000, finding that Liggett & Myers bore some responsibility for her death. On appeal, the decision was reversed. And though the Supreme Court said the case could be retried, Mark Edell and his associates, having already spent millions of dollars, just gave up. Mr. EDELL: The firms have just come to the conclusion that they can't financially absorb this litigation. Dr. COLUCCI: And that's part of the strategy - wear them down. And they wear down a jury, same way. Days and days of testimony about statistics and obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate. And the bottom line is, it's just a war of attrition. DONALDSON: [voice-over] We wanted to speak to the tobacco companies. Five of the six - Philip Morris, American Tobacco, Brown and Williamson, Lorilard, and ~ .9_lo.a TV interview, as did the Council for Tobacco Liggett & Myers - said n ~ Research and the industry's trade association, the Tobacco Institute. Only R.J. Reynolds agreed to see us, where we put the question to Dr. William Simmons about charges of a 40-year-long industry conspiracy to hide the truth. Mr. SIMMONS: I have- I've heard allegations to that effect. Mr. Donaldson, I have seen no evidence to that effect. DONALDSON: Doctor, that's a lawyer's answer, "I've seen no evidence." Mr. SIMMONS: But Mr. Donaldson, if I've seen no evidence, it's about the only answer I can give. DONALDSON: Well, how do you think the audience is going to take it when I say, "Here is the director of smoking and health" - you're not some little fish, you're not some guy just been hired, you're the director of smoking and health at RJR - who says to me, "I've seen no evidence there's a conspiracy," rather than, "No, Mr. Donaldson, there is not a conspiracy to hide the truth." Mr. SIMMONS: All right, how about this? To the best of my knowledge, to my ability to know, there is no conspiracy. DONALDSON: [voice-over] But there is an effort by R.J. Reynolds to silence its critics. It has gone after two of PrimeT"une's whistle- blowers. The day after he spoke with us, Dr. Robert Bruce was served with a restraining order to .