Tobacco Papers Surprised Him, Expert Says

The director of the Mayo Clinic’s Nicotine Dependence Center testified Wednesday that he was shocked to learn from internal corporate documents how much the tobacco industry knew about nicotine addiction and how to “manipulate” nicotine.

Although he is a recognized expert in the field, Dr. Richard D. Hurt--the opening witness in a landmark court case against the industry--said his review of company documents enhanced his knowledge of nicotine and addiction “in ways that are hard to describe. I had not even dreamed there had been this much work done over the years,” particularly on “nicotine manipulation” through the chemical makeup of cigarettes.

Hurt, who has written many scholarly articles on nicotine addiction and related subjects, said the degree of knowledge reflected in those documents vastly exceeds what was in the public domain. Many were written at a time when the industry was denying that nicotine was addictive--a stance that many industry executives still maintain in public.

Some of the internal company documents show Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds scientists in the early 1970s describing nicotine as a drug in private while they were denying that in public.

Hurt reviewed thousands of internal documents while preparing to testify as an expert for the state of Minnesota in its $1.7-billion suit against the cigarette companies. The state is seeking compensation for money spent treating smoking-related diseases. It is the first such case to go to trial.

Although thousands of pages of incriminating industry paperwork have come to light in recent years, the Minnesota case is expected to lead to the disclosure of significantly more. That process began Wednesday with disclosure of several previously unseen documents.

For example, an undated memo from Colin C. Greig, a British American Tobacco Co. scientist, described the cigarette as “a drug administration system for public use” with “very significant advantages,” in particular the fact that it delivers nicotine to the brain within 10 seconds.

Hurt testified that rapid delivery of a drug to the brain increases the likelihood of addiction, in part because it delivers pleasure more rapidly.

In addition, two early 1990s documents from BAT showed the company taking an intense interest in the development of nicotine patches and expressing concern about whether the patch would hurt the company’s business. A BAT scientist stated in one of the memos, though, that the patch would be relatively ineffective because it doesn’t get nicotine to the brain nearly as fast as a cigarette does and thus wouldn’t have the same pleasurable effect.

Michael Ciresi, the state’s lead lawyer, asked Hurt whether the documents he had reviewed were representative of what the other companies were doing, based on his review of thousands of internal documents. The doctor repeatedly responded yes.

A 1969 memo by Philip Morris psychologist William L. Dunn Jr. warns Philip Morris’ research director about company personnel describing “cigarette smoke as a drug. It is, of course, but there are dangerous FDA [Food and Drug Administration] implications to having such conceptualizations go beyond these walls.”

Hurt, the first witness in what is expected to be a four-month trial, also gave the federal jury a primer on the development of the cigarette industry in the U.S. He said that although tobacco has been around for hundreds of years, “cigarettes are a modern phenomenon.”

Hurt, who was born in Kentucky, a tobacco state, said cigarette production in this country was transformed after the Civil War with the creation of a rolling machine. He said that paved the way for lowered prices, mass production and the development of a nationwide market. Hundreds of billions of cigarettes are now sold every year in the United States.

Hurt then recounted the increase in the cases of lung cancer, which he said had been virtually nonexistent in this country before 1900. Now, he said, it is the leading cause of cancer fatalities among men and women in the country, accounting for 120,000 deaths a year.

He calculated that the 420,000 deaths a year attributable to cigarette smoking are “the equivalent of three fully loaded 747s crashing every day of the year, with no survivors.”

Hurt, a well-known anti-smoking activist, runs a center in Rochester, Minn., that has treated 15,000 people since it was opened in 1988.

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