The assembled pooh-bahs of the American Lung Association, American Cancer Society and American Heart Association are in a tizzy. The object of their outrage? A new advertising campaign for R.J. Reynolds' Winston cigarettes. The smokes in question have been reformulated, removing any and all of the chemicals, flavorings and other compounds normally used in mass-market cigarettes. The lack of such additives is the focus of the new Winston ads, which trumpet the brands"'true taste" and "naked" honesty. Not so fast, say the pooh-bahs, who are demanding that the Federal Trade Commission investigate and shut down the Winston advertisements. For some reason, the pooh-bahs believe that, by touting the absence of additives, Winston is making a claim that its cigarettes are somehow healthy.
"We demand evidence to substantiate the claim that these cigarettes are safer than other cigarettes," said John Garrison, chief executive of the American Lung Association. "Smokers will grab for anything they think might be less harmful, and Reynolds has an obligation to its customers to prove these new Winstons are any less dangerous than other cigarettes." What Mr. Garrison fails to mention, however, is how and why smokers got the idea additives are bad for them - and thus the corollary, that an absence of additives would be a good thing.
It can be argued that additives were the undoing of big tobacco. Back in 1994 (when the Democrats still controlled Capitol Hill) Rep. Henry Waxman held the famous hearings at which a phalanx of tobacco company executives piously declared their undying conviction that nicotine is not addictive. At issue was the companies' practice of manipulating the level of nicotine in cigarettes. The other main issue at the hearing was the revelation of the nearly 600 different chemicals and substances that the companies add to cigarettes. The anti-smoking establishment demanded that cigarettes be regulated if for no other reason than that the additives themselves were carcinogenic. The presence of additives in cigarettes was the wedge that helped the activists get the tobacco companies in a $350 billion headlock.
Some of the additives were quite benign-sounding - for example, sugar and apple-juice concentrate. Others sounded like part of a vast and insidious plot to sap smokers of their vital bodily fluids - 6-acetoxydihydrotheaspirane, alpha-amylcinnamaldehyde, ammonium phosphate dibasic and 2-acetyl-5-methylfuran. Many of the compounds added to cigarettes, it was argued during the highly publicized hearings, cause cancer. Among the additives that had been found to tear up the livers of rats were methoprene (a pesticide), ammonia and ethyl furoate.
The tobacco companies countered that all of the additives being used were either perfectly safe, or occurred in such slight traces that they met all U.S. standards for safe exposure to the chemicals concerned. This claim was attacked by Dr. Ron Davis, who argued that even the benign-sounding additives could be transformed into carcinogens when burned along with the tobacco. He pointed to a 1984 surgeon general's report suggesting that cocoa, when in cigarettes, could be lethal. Chocolate flavoring, he said, augmented the carcinogenicity of tar.
Dr. Davis was hardly the only one to claim that common food flavorings are dangerous when added to cigarettes. The list of chemicals in cigarettes begs a number of important questions about the safety of these additives. This was thejoint statement from the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association. Their statement went on to argue that substances that are safe to eat may be dangerous to inhale.
Three years ago the anti-smoking triumvirate denounced the use of additives in cigarettes, claiming that they were a toxic soup of carcinogens. Now a tobacco company has done nothing less than to heed their advice and remove the additives. But there is no rejoicing among the triumvirate's pooh-bahs. Instead, they are demanding that the tobacco companies come up with evidence that the additivefree cigarettes are less dangerous than the toxic-soup variety.
If there is no proof that the additives are harmful, then why did the triumvirate denounce additives three years ago? Are they now suggesting that they had no evidence for their claims? Or is it that, having used the issue of additives as a wedge, they aren't about to let Big Tobacco get off the hook with any additive-free nonsense?
If additives are harmful, then the pooh-bahs should be happy that smokers have an option that reduces their risks, if only marginally. If the additives are not harmful, then the pooh-bahs should apologize for having suggested that they were.
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