The Nation - News from Nov. 14, 1988

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, citing questions of long-term health effects, repeated his contention that the FDA should regulate the so-called smokeless cigarette. Speaking at a news conference at the annual meeting of the Assn. of American Medical Colleges in Chicago, Koop said he sees no reason to call the device a cigarette. The smokeless cigarette, such as “Premier,” now being test-marketed in Missouri and Arizona by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., is a cigarette-shaped device containing a capsule with non-burning tobacco, flavoring ingredients and other chemicals. Koop said: “It delivers nicotine by means of . . . crystaloid nicotine in a container and having hot air generated by the burning of charcoal pass over it. That makes it a drug delivery system to my way of thinking, and that would almost mandate that it would have to be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.”