Philip Morris Chief Criticizes Teen Marketing

Confronted by documents Wednesday that showed his company comparing a teen’s desire to drive to the desire for a smoke, the head of the nation’s largest cigarette company again said he was embarrassed by attempts to capture the youth market.

Geoffrey Bible, chairman and chief executive of Philip Morris Cos., was shown a 1981 Philip Morris memo about the effect of a cigarette tax increase on the teen-age market.

“I think it is more than coincidental that the sharpest declines in smoking prevalence among teen-age males occurred in 1979 and 1980, the years in which the price of gasoline rose most sharply,” researcher Myron Johnston wrote in the memo. “When it comes to a choice between smoking cigarettes or cruising around in his car, the average teen-age male will probably choose the latter.”

Bible said: “I don’t think we should have been commenting on matters like that. . . . I’m embarrassed by it.”

Bible had testified Tuesday that he was ashamed of youth marketing efforts by his company.

The state and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Minnesota are suing the tobacco industry to recover the $1.77 billion they say they’ve spent treating smoking-related illnesses.

Michael Ciresi, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, also asked Bible about a 1977 memo that described how the company hid its connection with a German research laboratory by routing samples bound for the lab through a Swiss facility.

“If this procedure is unacceptable to you, perhaps we should consider a ‘dummy’ mailing address in Cologne for the receipt of samples,” the memo’s author wrote.

“Does Philip Morris have a practice of setting up dummy mailing addresses?” Ciresi asked Bible.

“Absolutely not,” Bible said. “Anybody who did that today would be fired immediately . . . because they’ve done something that is wrong.”

Bible, called as a hostile witness by the state, later distanced himself from what happened before 1993, when he was given responsibility for worldwide tobacco operations after nearly 20 years with the company.

Bible spent most of his career overseas working in non-tobacco parts of the international holding company, which includes Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Post cereals, Maxwell House coffee, Altoids peppermints, Miller beer, Jell-O and Kool-Aid among its brands.

Philip Morris USA is the company’s domestic tobacco business, which makes Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Philip Morris and Parliament cigarettes.

Bible has been on the witness stand since Monday and has faced intense questioning from Ciresi. On Tuesday, Ciresi repeatedly asked the Australian-born executive to admit that since the 1960s Philip Morris Cos. had concealed what it knew about the addictiveness of smoking.