Packing In the Nicotine : FDA points to secret development of genetically altered tobacco

If the Food and Drug Administration is to regulate the nicotine in cigarettes as a drug, as the American Medical Assn. and many others urge, it must first show that tobacco companies deliberately manipulate the level of nicotine in their products.

The tobacco companies, responding to charges that they spike cigarettes with nicotine to keep smokers addicted, deny that they’re doing anything more than trying to assure consistency in taste to keep their customers happy.

But David A. Kessler, the FDA’s commissioner, has presented Congress with evidence that Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. has secret- ly developed and is using in its cigarettes a genetically altered tobacco plant--called Y-1--whose nicotine content is more than twice that found naturally in tobacco.

If not quite a smoking gun here surely is a smoldering leaf.

Brown & Williamson says Y-1 was prompted by a government effort in the 1970s to reduce the tar in cigarettes, tar being the residue of particulates that are believed to contain cancer-causing compounds. But cutting tar also meant cutting nicotine levels. Y-1, according to Brown & Williamson, was nothing more than a “blending tool” to compensate for that loss.

In that case, we are left to wonder, why did Brown & Williamson deny to the FDA as recently as May 3 that it had developed a high-nicotine plant? And why, on June 10, did officials of DNA Plant Technology of Berkeley, on contract to Brown & Williamson to work on tobacco breeding, tell the FDA that they had been authorized by the company to say that Y-1 “had never been commercialized,” meaning used in cigarettes. In fact, as the tobacco company admitted when confronted with the evidence, Y-1 is currently in five of its brands.

The evidence for nicotine manipulation grows, and the public health case for regulating this drug has been firmly made. Primary emphasis, as Kessler says, should be on keeping teen-agers from ever getting hooked on tobacco in the first place. Millions of Americans are already doomed to die prematurely because of smoking. With sound regulation, there’s a chance that millions of other lives might be saved.