Tobacco Documents Online

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PREFACE Probably no other personal pastime throughout history has evoked more controversy than smok- ing. People have smoked for hundreds of years - and others have attacked tobacco for as long. Those associated with Philip Morris are often confronted with claims about smoking and health and other industry-related issues. This brochure was developed to provide you with a reference of some of the most frequently made claims as well as possible responses. The responses are not fully comprehensive but they will provide you with basic useful facts about the issues. In using this brochure, it is important that you keep the following "guidelines" in mind: Be prepared: know the issues and be sure of your facts. Read this brochure and keep it readily at hand to consult periodically. Don't say yes until you are sure: always know with whom you are speaking before answering questions. If you are approached by journalists, refer them to your affiliate's corporate affairs executive or to the regional Corporate Affairs Department in Lausanne. Stay calm and open: remember, you and the Company have nothing to hide. Your approach should always be positive, honest and flexible. If you don't have a ready answer for a specific question, you can always offer to supply addi- tional details at a later time. Never guess: no one is an expert on all things and certain questions may be too technical for you to answer directly. When in doubt, never guess but offer to find out and supply an ac- curate answer. Personal views: remember that attempts to get you to state your personal opinion "off the re- cord" may simply be a ploy to get you to over- state your position. 1

Flat assertions that smoking is not dangerous should be avoided. Smoking has not been proven to cause disease. We do not claim to have all the answers - neither have those who oppose tobacco. Name calling: temper your references to those who oppose tobacco - they have a right to their opinion just as we have to ours. Aggressive re- torts generally gain little more than personal satis- faction. Safety claims: do not refer to "safer" or "less hazardous" cigarettes when speaking about prod- uct characteristics such as lower "tar" and nic- otine or filters. The accurate reference is "more acceptable products to consumers" since they have been developed in response to consumer demand. "Addiction": smoking is a practice, a custom, a habit - but it is not an "addiction" as the term is customarily used. Many people, obviously, can and do give up smoking. Analogies: do not compare tobacco to alcohol; more appropriate analogies might include tea, coffee, and chocolates or sweets. Industry-supported research has the goal of helping to identify and explain the gaps in know- ledge about smoking and health which still exist. Its purpose is not to support only "our" side of the controversy. Know when to get help: should you or your staff be confronted with claims or issues with which you are unfamiliar or uncertain, please contact your regional Corporate Affairs Department in Lausanne. 2

1. CLAIM: You should feel guilty working for a company which sells harmful products. No, because contrary to popular opinion, ciga- rette smoking has not been proven to be harmful. Philip Morris is certainly aware of the allegations made against smoking but it is also advised that many unresolved scientific questions still exist about smoking and health. In fact, one can be proud that Philip Morris takes a leading role in industry not only by its produc- tion of quality products but also by its commit- ment to supporting research to resolve the un- answered questions about smoking and health. 2. CLAIM: People working for tobacco com- panies are required to smoke. Not true. Smoking is not a consideration for em- ployment and no one is encouraged to smoke once they are employed. All employees are free to choose whether or not to smoke. It's a per- sonal decision and the proportion of smokers and nonsmokers in the Company is about the same as it is for the general public. If they do smoke, however, employees are encouraged to smoke the Company's brands rather than those of the com- petition. 3. CLAIM : The statistical evidence against smoking is so strong, no doubt remains about its harmful effect on health. One thing you can say for certain about smoking is that it does cause statistics. But, as we all know, statistics can be misused to "prove" just about anything. Statistical associations cannot prove cause-and-effect relationships - they sim- ply provide leads for further research. In the case of smoking, even the validity of the statistical associations has been challenged. Some of the population studies on which smok- ing statistics are based have been found to be 3

seriously flawed. For example, many have relied on death certificate diagnoses which are said to have an error rate of 25-40 %. Besides, most studies have investigated smoking in isolation of other variables also suspected to affect health, including lifestyle factors, occupa- tional and environmental exposure, and psycho- logical variables. Moreover, the reported "smoking epidemic" may be in part artificial - diagnostic techniques have been vastly improved over the past fifty years, to- tal population has grown and people are living longer. Many "smoking-associated" diseases are, after all, frequently diseases of old age. 4. CLAIM: Smoking causes lung cancer. How can smoking be said to cause lung cancer when the cause or causes of cancer are not yet known? Yes, there is a statistical association be- tween smoking and lung cancer, but even the original US Surgeon General's Report has admit- ted that statistical associations cannot prove a causal relationship. Besides, the statistical data against smoking is in- conclusive. Many questions remain unanswered, ~ for example: 'E - Why do the vast majority of "heavy" smok- ers ers never get lung cancer? ~ - On the other hand, why do a significant percentage of nonsmokers get lung cancer? - Why don't lung cancer rates in various countries such as Japan parallel cigarette consumption? In several countries, tobacco consumption is high whereas the rate of j lung cancer is low or vice versa. ( - Why, after more than forty years of research, ~ has science failed to produce human-type cn 1 lung cancer in laboratory animals through p I inhalation of tobacco smoke? ~ ! Cancer is a very complex disease. Many factors ~ have been suggested in addition to smoking, in- t,y O 4

cluding occupational and environmental expo- sures, diet, viruses, heredity and stress. Clearly there are many gaps in knowledge about lung cancer that only further research will resolve. 5. CLAIM: Smoking causes heart disease. No one actually knows what causes heart dis- ease. Smoking is only described as one of many possible "risk factors" associated with this dis- ease. Others, including age, heredity, diet, cho- lesterol, stress, obesity, hypertension and lack of exercise, have received considerable media atten- tion as well. In some countries, heart disease rates do not parallel cigarette consumption. For example, in Switzerland smoking increased during, the same period that deaths from heart disease declined dramatically. And in Sweden, smoking has de- clined but heart disease is rising. Experts have not been able to explain these and other inconsistencies, including why quitting smoking does not necessarily reduce heart dis- ease or why many people with heart disease are nonsmokers. 6. CLAIM: Smoking causes emphysema and other chronic lung diseases. The origin and development of these diseases are apparently poorly understood. Researchers have studied the possible role of many suspected fac- tors in addition to smoking, such as air pollution, occupational exposures, childhood diseases, adult infections and genetic disorders. But they have yet to find what actually causes these diseases although it has been shown they typically occur in older persons. In their efforts to determine the cause, scientists have exposed experimental animals to various substances, including tobacco smoke. Interest- ingly, such animal experiments have failed to 1 5

reproduce emphysema with tobacco smoke while exposures to air pollutants have produced this disease. 7. CLAIM: Smokers die younger. This has been described as a misleading statis- tical manipulation. Smokers are reported to differ from nonsmokers in a number of ways and all these may affect how long one lives: - Smokers are more energetic; - Smokers tend to eat more spicy foods; - Smokers move locations more frequently; - Smokers also apparently live with more stress and tension than nonsmokers. No one really knows why smokers' mortality rates differ from nonsmokers' but some have suggested that the prime determinant may be the behav- ioural and genetic nature of the smoker rather than the smoking itself. 8. CLAIM: Many people have quit smoking or are smoking less because they feel it is hazardous. The decision to smoke or not is a very personal matter. Indeed, many people have quit smoking. The tobacco industry does not discourage those that wish to quit just as it does not encourage nonsmokers to take up smoking. However, while tobacco consumption varies from country to country, there are actually more smokers today than in the past. Although the percentage of people who smoke has generally declined, the number of adult smokers has in- creased due to overall population growth. Ciga- rette sales volumes have continually gone up in , part because of the increase in the number of smokers and partly because people are living, and smoking, longer. 6

9. CLAIM: The tar, nicotine and carbon monox- ide in tobacco smoke are dangerous. Tobacco smoke constituents may be among the most heavily researched substances in the world. Despite this, no constituent, as found in tobacco smoke, has been proven to cause cancer or any other human disease. Tar: Actually, there is no such thing as tar in tobacco smoke. Tar is a laboratory substance, minus water and nicotine, collected by super- cooling and condensing tobacco smoke under special controlled conditions. But this laboratory method of producing "tar" has little to do with the way people actually smoke tobacco. Concern about tar is primarily due to early exper- iments which involved painting this artificially produced substance on experimental animals' skin. The scientific value of these tests has been seriously questioned since animal skin is very different from the lining of a human lung and be- cause. unrealistically high concentrations of tar - equal to smoking 100,000 cigarettes a day - were used. Nicotine: A colorless substance found in tobacco leaves and smoke, nicotine is eliminated from blood rapidly and research has shown that it has little cumulative effect. In fact, by the time a cigarette is finished much of the nicotine is al- ready metabolised. Claims that nicotine causes heart disease have not been proven and even the original US Sur- geon General's Report clearly stated, "nicotine in quantities absorbed from smoking and other methods of tobacco use is very low and probably does not represent a significant health problem." Carbon monoxide or CO is a tasteless, colorless, odorless gas produced by many natural and man- made sources - motor vehicles and industrial processes, cooking and heating equipment, 7

i i and even human metabolism. In the levels found in tobacco smoke, it has never been demonstrat- ed to cause heart disease or any other disease. CO from tobacco smoke also has little impact on room air except under highly artificial circum- stances. Under re listic conditions, CO from to- bacco smoke rarely exceeds 10 parts per million (ppm) and is closer to 5 ppm in public places with normal ventilation. Both these figures are well below occupational limits recommended by various health authorities for workers exposed over an eight-hour period. 10. CLAIM: Cigarettes with low tar and nic- otine are "safer." Philip Morris has made no such claims. None of our brands are marketed as being "safer" since we do not believe that cigarettes have been proven to be either safe or unsafe. Many varieties of low tar-nicotine cigarettes are now on the market in response to increased con- sumer demand for this type of cigarette. This de- mand has probably developed from media atten- tion given to these products and from the public's growing general preference for "lighter" products including low calorie foods and beverages. Despite all the researeh that has been done over many years, no one has demonstrated that switching to low tar-nicotine cigarettes has any health significance. 11. CLAIM: Smokers can't quit because they're addicted to nicotine. "Addiction" is a word so over-used it has become almost meaningless. People say that they are addicted to all sorts of things: to foods like sweets, to work, to video games or even to sex. Smoking is a practice, a custom - not an "ad- diction" as commonly understood. 8

Even the 1964 Surgeon General's Report said a clear distinction should be made between addic- tion and habituation when it comes to smoking. Recently, the West German government stressed that tobacco products are not addictive. Moreover, researchers are not even agreed on what exact influence nicotine reportedly has. Studies have shown that even after decreasing nicotine in test cigarettes by 20-30 %, smokers did not change their consumption habits. Just because some people find it difficult to quit any one acquired behaviour does not make it an addiction. Many people do quit smoking - in fact, 95 % of Americans who have quit are said to have done so without help from an organized cessation programme. 12. CLAIM : Labelling on tobacco products and advertising are required to protect consumers. We certainly uphold the consumer's right to infor- mation but believe that product labelling is valid when it provides information that is eful to consumers in making their purchase decisions. Constituents: In the case of tobacco, the data on constituent yields may be misleading to the con- sumer. Such labelling inaccurately suggests that tobacco smoke contains harmful substances al- though after decades of research no constituent as found in tobacco smoke has been proven to cause cancer or any other human disease. Reported constituent levels are also of limited value since machines used to measure smoke components cannot duplicate the way humans smoke. Obviously no two smokers smoke the same way and no one smoker smokes the same way all the time. These testing difficulties have been acknowledged by the US government. Warnings: Most people would agree that there is already high awareness of the claims against 9