January 14, 1998; Page A01

Smoke, Lies & Compromise - Part III

CIGARETTE WARS: COMPANIES SCRAMBLE TO FIND A "SAFER" WAY OF SMOKING

By Shankar Vedantam

Helen Martin woke up and trudged off to her sewing room for a cigarette.

It was the only place in the house she was allowed to smoke. She extracted a cigarette from the pack, tapped it against the side, and looked for her lighter.

Martin had tried repeatedly to quit. Finally, after what seemed like the hundredth failure, she resigned herself to a lifetime of smoking.

Her husband had begged her to quit, cajoled, argued, fought. Finally, he banished her to the sewing room of their home near Atlanta. He hated the smell of cigarettes, the ash, the stains.

Martin, 65, hated the fights, but what was she to do? No one had come up with a cigarette that didn't make the house smoky, produce an odor, or leave ash behind. Let alone one that was safe.

After her father, a lifelong smoker, died of lung cancer, she had a premonition: This is how she would die.

She brought the flame to the tip of her cigarette.

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The tobacco deal to be taken up by Congress early this year promises to unleash a torrent of health-conscious innovation from the tobacco industry.

Millions of lives and billions of dollars could be at stake.

Among the key requirements of the proposed settlement, hammered out by state attorneys general, anti-tobacco lawyers, public-health counsel and industry representatives, are provisions to ensure that the industry "works to develop and introduce less-hazardous tobacco products."

For decades, the industry has been doing exactly that. But in silence, secrecy and euphemism. Recently released industry documents show that some company scientists' pleas to develop safer cigarettes were squelched by executives and lawyers.

That's because industry executives had stood before Congress, raised their right hands, and sworn that they did not know if smoking caused disease.

The science was sketchy, they'd said. The link between smoking and disease hadn't been proved. It was the flimsy medical cloak for a brazen legal strategy.

If companies openly marketed "safer cigarettes," the obvious question would be, safer than what? The legal strategy would be blown out of the water.

"There's not the slightest doubt that they could have made a safer product and chose not to do it," said Philadelphia attorney Stephen A. Sheller, who has spearheaded many lawsuits against the tobacco industry, grilled industry executives, and studied hundreds of secret company documents.

"They said, 'If we truly made a safer product, we'd be sued by the people using the unsafe ones."'

Still, the companies had to do something to satisfy smokers' desire for safer products. So filter cigarettes were sold as "smoother." Low-tar cigarettes were "milder." One ad showed an arrow pointing down and the mysterious slogan, "Carlton is lowest."

Euphemisms such as these might soon be unneeded.

In exchange for tobacco-industry payments of $ 368.5 billion to compensate for the costs of smoking-related disease, the government would give tobacco companies broad legal immunity.

"The settlement provides an enormous incentive to (make safer cigarettes) that would otherwise not be there," said Meyer Koplow, an industry lawyer who helped negotiate the proposed settlement.

The government would get new power to regulate tobacco. Higher taxes could be imposed on more lethal brands. Safer cigarettes would get greater advertising freedoms. With market share at stake, he said, the companies were already working furiously to develop lower-risk products.

The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the country's second-largest after Philip Morris Inc., has already spent a decade and, according to company spokesman Nat Walker, "many hundreds of millions of dollars" trying to develop lower-risk products.

On Oct. 23, Philip Morris _ whose patent filings for safer cigarettes far exceed those of RJR _ announced it was launching market tests of Accord, a "cigarette smoking system" in which smokers insert cigarettes into a hand-held electrical lighter, with "no sidestream smoke, no ashes, and virtually no lingering odor."

Suddenly, saving lives makes business sense.

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In her sewing room, Helen Martin sucked on her cigarette. The tip glowed at 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, and the aroma of tobacco made her nostrils tingle.

The day's first cigarette was always the best, and the first puff was the best part.

Smoking is a complicated behavior, with powerful biological and psychological components. Jack Henningfield, a pharmacologist and expert on nicotine addiction at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, described what happened next.

The little blast furnace Martin held between her fingers produced thousands of chemicals, including nicotine, carbon monoxide, and complex molecules called nitrosamines. They raced through the little cylinder of tobacco and over her taste buds.

She inhaled.

Nicotine molecules crashed into nerve endings at the back of her throat. Tiny electrical currents raced to her brain.

As the drug swept down her windpipe, it irritated the tissue. The unpleasant burning sensation is one of the signs smokers look for: the feel of a real cigarette.

Hundreds of thousands of smoke particles, including about 40 known carcinogens, swept into the alveoli, the spongelike membranes of her lungs. It was less than two seconds after she'd inhaled. Great surges of blood flowed over the membranes.

The particles were swept up by the blood, where a chemical called hemoglobin, poised to pick up oxygen, was instead shackled by the smoke's carbon monoxide.

Each time a hemoglobin molecule was snapped up, there was one less molecule to ferry toxic carbon dioxide out of the body, and precious oxygen in.

Three seconds had passed.

The blood in Martin's lungs flowed back into her heart, then out to her body.

In about seven seconds, a flotilla of chemicals had dropped anchor in most major organs. Nicotine was deposited on tissues throughout her body, its effects largely unknown. It also leaped across the membrane designed to protect the brain from foreign substances. By a quirk of nature, it closely resembled a natural body chemical that the membrane doesn't filter.

The drug affected about a dozen types of receptors in the brain. Some of these receptors triggered areas of Martin's brain that register emotions, especially those associated with pleasure.

It was less then 10 seconds since she had inhaled. Her day had begun.

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Making a safer cigarette _ that smokers will enjoy _ is like a Zen riddle: Can you take the smoke out of smoking?

By studying what happens after inhaling, researchers discovered that the danger is mostly in the burned particles. But it's the nicotine that smokers crave.

Although nicotine is addictive, and toxic in large doses, there is little in cigarettes. It's mostly the smoke, with its carcinogens and carbon monoxide, that can trigger cancer, heart disease, and emphysema.

The solution to the Zen puzzle seems simple: Give smokers pure nicotine _ the drug they crave _ without most of the danger.

It doesn't work. Nicotine patches deliver pure nicotine. But no one reaches for a patch with a sigh of relief in the morning.

Smokers enjoy the puffing. When they go a long while without smoking, their nicotine levels drop, and their craving increases.

That's why smokers reach for a cigarette as soon as they wake up. The first cigarette feels like coming out of a dip in a roller-coaster ride -- the best smoke of the day.

To their disappointment, the researchers also discovered that the smoke provides aroma and taste, and smooths the passage of the nicotine --which, by itself, is harsh -- into smokers' lungs.

And smoke's Bogart-esque mystique and ritual turn out to be every bit as addictive as the nicotine itself.

It was a maddeningly difficult scientific problem. But after years of analysis, false starts and missteps, the researchers found a way out of the Zen puzzle. One of the more novel ideas came from R.J. Reynolds.

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Rumors of the researchers' unusual solution spread through the company. By the time Dominic Scirrotto, an RJR marketing executive, was summoned to headquarters in Winston-Salem, N.C., in November 1995, he knew they would be talking about a new type of cigarette.

But he didn't know what it consisted of. The research had been tightly guarded at the Bowman Gray Technical Center, where RJR's 400 toxicologists, biologists and chemists toiled.

Scirrotto was directed to a room where 30 people sat around a table.

An intense man with confident, piercing eyes and a firm handshake, he knew that tobacco companies' efforts to develop safer cigarettes had been cumbersome failures. Even RJR's last attempt, a cigarette called Premier, had little appeal for smokers.

The meeting began with a company executive describing the latest cigarette, Eclipse. It made very little smoke when lit, but delivered the nicotine. It was almost odorless and left no stains.

It sounded like Helen Martin's dream cigarette.

It didn't burn down like a conventional cigarette; the finished butt was the same length as a fresh cigarette. A smoker knew that the cigarette was finished only because it stopped providing taste.

The executive passed Eclipses around to the people at the table. Scirrotto was astounded. It looked like a conventional cigarette. Would it taste like one, too?

Scirrotto did what he had wanted to do since the meeting began. He broke it open. He had to know the trick.

At first, all he saw was a cylinder of tobacco wrapped in paper. But there was something unusual at the end. It was a carbon tip, about the size of the colored end of a candy cigarette.

The tobacco in this cigarette would never actually burn, so there would be fewer harmful by-products. Instead, the glowing carbon _ which would stay at the tip _ would vaporize a mixture of moisture and glycerine packed into the cigarette. As the smoker inhaled, the vapor would pass over the tobacco, collecting aroma and nicotine on its way to the smoker's lips.

Most of the tobacco would be heated to one-sixth the temperature of a burning cigarette.

The researchers had solved the puzzle, but one critical question remained: Its taste was definitely inferior to a regular cigarette _ would smokers want to buy it?

That's why Scirrotto and the other marketing experts had been summoned. They would test-market Eclipse in Chattanooga to see if smokers went for it. Along with R.J. Reynolds, other tobacco companies have been flooding the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with their ideas for safer cigarettes.

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In the competitive world of lower-risk cigarettes, no idea seems too bizarre.

Each company guards its research ferociously, filing patents to protect its work, but keeping the wording vague so competitors won't know what they're doing.

For instance, a patent filed March 18 by the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. described "a smoking article including a porous inner core of an aerosol-generating composition circumscribed by a porous ceramic insulator tube which in turn is circumscribed by a porous charcoal fuel tube. Upon ignition, the smoking article, which is preferably in a cigarette rod form, produces an aerosol that resembles tobacco smoke."

Philip Morris, which makes Marlboro, is experimenting with ways to electrically heat tobacco. On Dec. 2, it filed three patents, including techniques to develop electrical cigarettes and an electrical lighter.

Last July, Brown & Williamson won a patent for a chemical process that would treat cigarette wrapping paper so that it burned with "reduced visible sidestream smoke," which bothers nonsmokers.

A week earlier, R.J. Reynolds patented a way to heat cigarettes using an electrochemical heat source: Two metals wrapped in a foil or a wire would be triggered by a chemical reaction to form heat.

Perhaps the strangest idea was patented by Philip Morris in January last year: Nicotine and flavorings would be placed inside something like a microcassette. As the tape was "played," it would pass by a heating element, which would release the nicotine and the flavor.

There was no word on how the nicotine would get from the tape to the "smoker," and no mention of headphones.

Apart from its carbon tip, Eclipse was mundane compared with these exotic devices. But it was the closest product to retail shelves -- if only marketers like Scirrotto could get smokers to like it.

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It was Christmas 1996 when the marketers converged on the Eastgate Mall in Chattanooga bearing gifts -- Eclipse cigarettes.

Their plan was simple -- find smokers, inquire about their smoking habits, and then give them Eclipses to try at their leisure. A questionnaire would be mailed later.

Ashley Mullins, then 21, remembers listening patiently to a lot of technical stuff. Clipboards in hand, the marketers told him: "It's got a carbon-type filament at the end of it" and "The tobacco is rolled up in a metallic type of film" and "The tobacco just smolders all the way down without burning."

They talked about how the smoke in a conventional cigarette was mostly tar and nicotine, while the smoke from an Eclipse was mostly moisture.

They told Mullins that the cigarette had the advantage of going out easily. Unattended, it would die out in about 30 seconds. So he could relight it as often as he liked.

They gave him two packs.

Leaving the mall, Mullins lit a cigarette. He felt the buzz all right, the nicotine rush. But it didn't taste as good as his Camel Lights. And it wasn't satisfying psychologically: Mullins smoked when he was nervous or bored. He loved seeing the smoke going up and the cigarette going down. It felt as if he was burning his cares away.

He was disappointed to discover that Eclipse did neither. Besides, who wanted to keep relighting a cigarette?

When he was halfway through the first pack, a friend asked what he was smoking. Mullins thrust the remaining cigarettes into his friend's hands.

The questionnaires that Mullins and hundreds of others returned were carefully studied by Dave Iauco, Reynolds' chief for business development, and Melinda Simmons, marketing director for the Eclipse project. It was clear that the company had been so enamored with its innovation that it had forgotten to see things from smokers' point of view.

"I could tell you I have a new product called a microwave oven, it heats food from the inside," said Simmons. "But what you really want to know is, it can bake a potato in 10 minutes."

Simmons threw out all the ads about how Eclipse was a superior cigarette.

The new messages would be: "Smell like your cologne, not your cigarette" and "Smoke on your couch, not on your porch."

Another mistake was trying to compete with regular cigarettes, which taste better.

Iauco's assessment was blunt:

"No smoker is going to switch to a lower-risk product unless they know of a benefit and believe it," he said. "There will be trade-offs and adjustments, things that the smoker will have to give up."

Giving away cigarettes was a mistake, too.

People who got free cigarettes were giving them to friends, who knew even less about Eclipse's advantages. But its disadvantages were obvious from the first puff.

Reynolds decided to run another trial, this time in Atlanta. Dominic Scirrotto would manage it.

Scirrotto was instructed to tell potential customers up front about the cigarette's disadvantages. It would be harder to light than regular cigarettes and wouldn't taste as good. It would take time to get used to it, maybe a carton or two. It was like diet drinks. At first, they seem tasteless, but eventually, converts come to like them.

Besides one or two trial cigarettes, none would be given away. Those interested enough to buy the cigarettes were more likely to finish them.

The company had also gone back to the researchers to improve the taste of Eclipse.

Smokers make a lot of their judgment on taste in the first two or three puffs, Gary Burger, RJR's science chief, had discovered.

Why not make those puffs feel more like the real thing?

Why not pack in more fine-quality tobacco next to the carbon tip?

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Marcia Baker couldn't believe what she saw as she walked through the mall after getting her nails done. The sign said: R.J. Reynolds Smoking Lounge.

Baker, 32, was more accustomed to signs that said "no smoking" and "this is a smoke-free building" than one that was friendly to the forsaken smoker.

She ran back to the nail salon to fetch her mother, Diana Perez, 49, another smoker.

Perez entered the plush lounge looking skeptical. What was the catch?

The pair lit up their own cigarettes. Then Perez noticed the signs for Eclipse on the table. What was that about?

This was Scirotto's chance to succeed, but it was also his chance to fail. He had learned to smile confidently whenever he was nervous. Now, he drew up a chair and offered each woman a cigarette. He explained that Eclipse would let them stay odor- free.

"Here's the biggie," he said, beaming away. "No ashes."

"Wow," Perez said.

"There's no lingering odor left on the walls," Scirrotto said. "It will create a truce between you and your nonsmoking family. Is that important to you?"

"It's very important," Perez said. Her husband hated the ash and smell of cigarettes.

Scirrotto explained Eclipse would be harder to light -- and keep lit -- than a regular cigarette, and would take two or three good puffs before it got going.

Both women nodded.

"Look!" Baker exclaimed to her mother, after lighting up an Eclipse. "There's no smoke coming out of the end."

"That's weird," Perez said. "How do I know when it's finished?" Baker asked.

Scirrotto explained that the cigarette's taste would slowly fade.

"There's a period of adjustment here," Scirrotto warned. "It's like when you go from a light to an ultra-light, it takes about a week to adjust."

"OK, you've got me sold," Perez said.

He explained that a carton cost $20.

Perez turned to her daughter: "Here, give him $20." Scirrotto handed her a carton.

Perez asked her daughter if she was going to buy any for herself. Baker said she wanted to think about it some more.

Perez dropped her carton in her bag. "Remember, I'm not sharing them with you."

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There is no safe cigarette today. There will probably never be a safe cigarette. The best hope is for a safer cigarette.

And it will take at least 30 years to know if the "safer" cigarette is really safer, because it takes that long for many smoking-related diseases to show up. If the scientists are wrong, millions of people could get sick.

"Safer cigarettes are definitely a very poor second to no cigarettes," said Michael Thun, a senior scientist at the American Cancer Society.

The safer cigarette should be only a last resort for people who can't quit, he said.

Thun's concern is that the tobacco industry, driven by financial rather than public health considerations, cannot be trusted to keep from marketing a safer cigarette to millions of nonsmokers.

At least one cigarette company has pondered this conundrum: One secret 1978 document from the Liggett Group shows that its executives debated whether it was right to try to "to develop a safe method for administering a habit-forming drug when, in so doing, the number of addicts will increase?"

In the marketing of Eclipse, RJR is careful not to make explicit health claims. When asked by customers if it is safer, Scirrotto will only say Eclipse gives off less smoke and leaves no lingering odor.

"There's the lunacy of the thing," said Greg Connolly, Massachusetts' tobacco control chief. "They have a product that's clearly safer, but they can't market it as such."

The tobacco settlement could change that, but anti-smoking groups are fearful about allowing cigarette companies to claim products such as Eclipse are safer.

"The settlement could create a system that makes it even easier to market products that are dangerous," said Henningfield, the Johns Hopkins researcher.

Take the development of filter cigarettes. Smokers believed they were safer, which may have been true had the smokers puffed them the same way they smoked unfiltered cigarettes. But smokers sucked on these cigarettes harder, Thun said, to get the same sensation.

Besides, many smokers who planned to quit kept smoking, believing the new brands were safer.

The result: levels of disease and death that are hardly different than their unfiltered predecessors.

How people smoke Eclipse could be a concern, too.

Philadelphia anti-tobacco attorney Sheller has information from research done by Reynolds that indicates that Eclipse smokers take more puffs per cigarette than those who smoke other brands.

Even if it were shown that lung cancer was less likely with Eclipse -- a tricky thing to prove --cigarette smoking affects the progression and virulence of dozens of other diseases. It is unclear whether a safer cigarette would change this.

And no one really knows how the elements of cigarette smoke influence each other and the body. No one knows which constituents to reduce and by how much to have the greatest impact on disease.

Burger, RJR's science chief, says that while Eclipse produces about the same levels of carbon monoxide as some conventional cigarettes, it significantly reduces some of the known carcinogens.

"When you have a carbon heat source, no matter how clean it is, it is going to form carbon monoxide," he said.

But beyond the science, there are fundamental differences between the industry and public-health groups: The companies want people to smoke. The public-health groups want people to quit.

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Helen Martin was so intrigued by the ad for Eclipse in the paper that she drove to the North Point Mall and tracked down the smoking lounge.

She listened to the sales pitch. Nonsmokers couldn't tell the difference between rooms where people had smoked Eclipses and smoke-free rooms.

Perhaps, Martin said with a grin, the day would arrive when smokers could smoke Eclipses on airplanes?

Don't bet on it, the Reynolds people said.

Martin smoked one Eclipse, then another. She flicked the cigarette to get rid of nonexistent ash --part of her ritual -- and then examined the ashless tip with surprise.

If it was so clean, surely it would mean less gunk in her lungs as well?

"Like they said, most cigarettes are 80 percent nicotine and tar and 20 percent moisture," she said. She waved the Eclipse. "It's reversed. That's a good thing for health."

She finished the cigarette and placed it gingerly in the ashtray. She knew what she was going to do that evening when her husband gave her his "look."

"I'm going to tell him, 'Sit down. I'm going to smoke a cigarette. Tell me what you think."'

She went to the counter and bought a carton. Scirrotto beamed, and the sale was rung up.

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