Documents Tie Nicotine Levels, Cigarette Sales
Watching with alarm as Marlboro cigarette sales skyrocketed in the early 1970s and ate into the market share of their products, R.J. Reynolds officials conducted secret research that concluded that the rapid rise of Philip Morris’ brand was due to “deliberate and controlled” nicotine enhancing methods, according to Reynolds documents that have been made public as part of a sweeping lawsuit in Minnesota.
The documents show that Reynolds scientists discovered that Marlboro had a considerably higher “free” nicotine level than Reynolds brands such as Winston, and therefore provided a greater nicotine “kick.” Reynolds officials concluded in 1973 that Philip Morris had come up with “a new and distinguishably different type of cigarette” that would be difficult to compete with.
“Substantial numbers of smokers are learning to like and use products with smoking qualities significantly different from those of our standard brands,” making it unlikely that smokers would change from Marlboro to Winston, according to one of the documents. This was a potentially significant competitive problem since 40% of beginning smokers were choosing Marlboros.
One of the documents states categorically: “In essence, a cigarette is a system for delivery of nicotine to the smoker in attractive, useful form.”
That is a potentially significant statement, due to the contention by cigarette critics, including Food and Drug Administration chief David A. Kessler, that cigarettes are an addictive product and that cigarette manufacturers deliberately manipulate nicotine content to hook smokers.
RJR measured the nicotine content and chemical composition of different brands of cigarettes and compared it with annual sales figures. The company constructed mathematical regression models, which demonstrated that increased sales were attributable to larger amounts of “free nicotine,” according to the documents.
Lawyers for the state of Minnesota and Minnesota Blue Cross obtained the documents as part of their massive suit seeking to recover from tobacco companies millions of dollars expended for the health care of Medicaid recipients who smoked and became ill.
“These documents are smoking guns . . . extremely significant,” said Richard A. Daynard, professor of law at Northeastern University in Boston and chairman of the Tobacco Products Liability Project, a public health advocacy group that encourages lawsuits against the industry. “This is directly contrary to everything Reynolds has always claimed.”
The documents show that RJR considered changing the chemical composition of its cigarettes in the same direction as Philip Morris’ to be better able to compete with Marlboro, which became the nation’s No. 1 brand in 1975 and has remained there ever since.
In particular, one RJR document talks about developing cigarettes with an additional nicotine “kick” for the “youth” market.
Several of the documents focus on Marlboro’s “smoke pH.” According to the documents, the pH value of smoke, which relates to the level of acidity/alkalinity, has a marked impact on the properties of nicotine in a cigarette. RJR scientists discovered that the “smoke pH” of Marlboro was considerably higher than in RJR’s brands--increasing the amount of free nicotine.
RJR officials responded that the documents are not important. Robert Suber, the company’s director of health and environmental studies, said the firm had done further research between 1973 and 1988 that came to sharply different conclusions. He said the company’s studies showed that the pH levels of Marlboro cigarettes had declined during that period, while its sales remained steady or increased.
He said that if Reynolds’ initial research conclusions had been correct then, logically, Marlboro sales would have declined as the pH levels dropped. Suber declared: “We at Reynolds do not use a pH to design any products.”
Reynolds spokeswoman Peggy Carter said it was natural for Reynolds to do research on Marlboro because it was “beginning to gain, and Winston, our major entry into the market, was beginning to experience some sales decline” in the 1971-1973 period. She said Winston, the first popular filter-tip cigarette introduced in the United States, became the largest selling brand in 1966 and held that position until 1975, when it was overtaken by Marlboro. Currently, she said, Marlboro has 28% of the U.S. market, while Winston has 6%.
Michael V. Ciresi, a Minneapolis attorney who is one of the state’s special counsels in the Minnesota case, scoffed at the remarks by Reynolds officials. “They have an explanation for everything,” he said. “They deny, they give you a half truth, they obstruct. When something is found out, they tell you it had no significance because later on we found out differently. My response to them would be: ‘Give us all your documents and we’ll see if what you’re saying is true.’ ”
Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, called the documents “pretty remarkable” and expressed skepticism about the Reynolds response. “I find it humorous that Reynolds is saying that this very high quality and sophisticated research was some kind of an aberration. They’re basically ‘dissing’ their own people,” said Glantz, the lead author of “The Cigarette Papers,” a 1996 book based primarily on internal documents of another cigarette maker .
“I find it particularly interesting that when Reynolds did that mathematical regression analysis, they found that ‘free nicotine’ was a more powerful predictor of sales than brand advertising. The concern they were expressing is that the way the Marlboro was engineered was giving Philip Morris inroads into the youth market which Reynolds would have a hard time recovering from,” Glantz said. “That was a good predictor of the future. Everyone is criticizing Joe Camel [the cartoon character hawking Reynolds’ Camel cigarettes], but still, today, two-thirds of the cigarettes smoked by kids are Marlboros.”
Attorneys for the state of Minnesota and Minnesota Blue Cross appended the Reynolds documents to a motion they filed recently opposing efforts by the tobacco industry to obtain a more restrictive protective order in the high-profile case.
The cigarette companies contend that they need greater protection for competitive information. In mid-April, tobacco industry lawyers filed papers attempting to gain greater control over what documents they must turn over and under what conditions.
The companies allege that the current situation denies them the rigid protection of competitive information on ongoing research and marketing plans that they need.
But the plaintiffs’ lawyers contend that the companies are attempting to unilaterally withhold documents that go to the heart of the case--including documents on the success of Marlboro and “nicotine manipulation” and the harmful effect of cigarettes. The plaintiffs also contend that the defendants are trying to “emasculate” the existing protective order and to make the case more costly and difficult to litigate.
The plaintiffs say that if the defense’s request was granted, it would be considerably more difficult for them to obtain documents of the type they got from Reynolds.
Minnesota Atty. Gen. Hubert H. Humphrey III said in regard to the companies’ attempts to restrict access to their documents:
“This is just the latest effort to bury the truth about what the tobacco companies know and when they knew it. The Marlboro story set forth in our brief is truly stunning, but it is also just one small sliver from an enormous iceberg.”
So far, about 7.5 million documents have been turned over by the cigarette companies in the Minnesota case. The vast majority of the documents have not been made public yet. Millions of the documents are housed in a depository in Minnesota and millions more are in a depository in England.
Three separate memos from July and August 1973 discuss the regression analysis done by Reynolds in an attempt to determine which factors affected sales. R.A. Blevins Jr., the company’s director of marketing and planning, wrote on July 12, 1973, that free nicotine, advertising expenditures and cigarette size of Winstons and Marlboros all affected market share “independently and collectively.”
However, Blevins added that “the variability due to ‘free nicotine’ was significant and its contribution was over and above that of advertising expenditures and [cigarette size].”
In December 1973, Frank Colby, a senior scientist at Reynolds, sent Blevins a memo suggesting that the company “develop a new RJR youth-appeal brand based on the concept of going back--at least halfway--to the technological design of the Winston and other filter cigarettes of the 1950s.”
Colby suggested that the company return partway toward a 1950s-style cigarette that, among other things, “delivered more ‘enjoyment’ or ‘kicks’ (nicotine).”
Colby stated that “for public relations reasons it would be impossible to go back all the way to the 1955-type cigarettes.”
In 1964, the surgeon general first declared that cigarettes are dangerous to health.
The Minnesota case is one of eight filed by state attorney generals around the country seeking to recover damages from six major tobacco companies and two industry trade associations. The Minnesota case is scheduled to go to trial in 1998.
