Massachusetts Bill Requires Disclosure of Tobacco Additives

Massachusetts lawmakers have passed a landmark bill requiring tobacco companies to report, for the first time, the additives they use in each of their cigarette brands and smokeless tobacco products, disclosures they have successfully fought for nearly 20 years.

Gov. William Weld has said he will sign the legislation, which also requires cigarette makers to annually report the nicotine yields of their products. But the measure is almost certain to face a fierce court challenge by the industry, which has long argued that brand recipes are valuable trade secrets.

Under the bill, tobacco companies starting next year will have to give state health authorities lists of every “added constituent” on a brand-by-brand basis and in descending order of the weight or count of each ingredient used.

The bill passed the Massachusetts Senate on Wednesday on a 39-0 vote after passing the House a few days earlier.

It “was crafted for the purpose of giving consumers of tobacco the information they need to make good decisions,” Sean Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said Thursday. It’s the same as people being “able to read on the outside of a container of food what they’re ingesting,” Fitzpatrick said.

Tobacco foes and health groups have long called on Congress and the states to require disclosure of cigarette additives, saying it is ludicrous to exempt producers of a hazardous product from right-to-know standards imposed on other manufacturers. If companies have to disclose the ingredients in mustard or mayonnaise, “why should cigarettes be any different?” Weld spokesman Bob Bliss asked.

But Thomas Lauria, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, an industry lobby group, said the industry’s opposition “centers on the protection of trade secrets.”

The law “would be a godsend to foreign competitors and to national competitors,” Lauria added.

He stopped short of promising a lawsuit, saying “the entire legal matter is under consideration.”

Although cigarettes appear to be nothing but tobacco rolled in paper, they also contain a variety of chemicals, plant extracts and other additives that keep the tobacco moist and affect the burn rate, flavor and aroma of the smoke. Health authorities have long maintained that certain of these additives may enhance the health risks of smoking when chemically altered by combustion.

More recently, tobacco foes have also charged that certain additives are used to enhance nicotine delivery, a charge tobacco companies have denied.

Under legislation passed by Congress in 1984, the cigarette companies have had to provide an annual list of additives to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But under the law, the list cannot be made public. Nor does it specify which companies use which additives in which brands.

Under renewed pressure during the last couple of years, the industry has released a list of about 600 additives but without saying which brands they are used in.

Times wire services contributed to this report.

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