A new report claims that cigarette manufacturers had the know-how to make cigarette smoking safer, but did not introduce them
according to a report by the Action on Smoking and Health ( ash ) and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, uk, tobacco giants possessed the technology that could have reduced the death toll caused by their products, but did not use them fearing that marketing a 'safer' cigarette would amount to an admission that smoking is dangerous.
An article in the New Scientist (Vol 161, No 2176) says that though 58 methods were patented by cigarette manufacturers for cutting levels of toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke, none were introduced. In 1980, British American Tobacco ( bat) filed a patent ( us 4182348) by which carbon monoxide and nitric oxide was removed from smoke. A similar patent was registered by Philip Morris in 1981, which claimed to cut levels of hydrogen cyanide.
There are many reasons why these technologies were not adopted. A few experts feel that the cost of implementing these processes could have been a constraint. But the real reason, many feel, is the legal difficulties the companies would have to face in admitting the dangers posed by their products.
Says Clive Bates, director of ash : "Marketing a cigarette on the basis that it had less of a tasteless gas like carbon monoxide would effectively mean admitting the product was bad for you. Then you would move into the area of product liability with the smoker who has had heart disease made worse by inhaling carbon monoxide."
Interestingly, cigarette companies have introduced lower-tar brands for many years. But they have not said that they are comparatively safer. Instead, they marketed them as tasting milder, says Bates.
A confidential memo written by Patrick Sheehy, the chief executive of bat in 1986, states: "In attempting to develop a 'safe cigarette you are, by implication, in danger of being interpreted as accepting that the current product is unsafe and this is not a position I think we should take."
However, Bates' claims have been refuted by Chris Proctor, head of science and regulatory affairs at bat 's London headquarters. These technologies were not developed because they might, in theory, increase levels of other toxic chemicals, says Proctor. But he could not confirm whether bat had conducted tests to exclude this possibility.
To what extent these technologies could have cut the number of deaths, still remains unclear. Claims Bates: "If you could make cigarettes 10 per cent less dangerous, that's 12,000 lives saved each year in the uk alone."
Taking the cue, a small company Star Scientific of Petersburg, Virginia, is planning to introduce nitrosamine-free cigarettes next year. Nitrosamines are the most dangerous of substances found in cigarette smoke. Their method is to microwave tobacco to kill the bacteria that creates the right chemical environment for the production of Nitrosamines. The company patented this method ( us 5803081) in 1998.
"If their process is effective, it should be applied to cigarette manufacturing everywhere," says John Slade, a specialist in nicotine addiction at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark. "But it might require legislation," he adds.
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