SMOKE SCREENS
Enchantment and Menace of an American Weed
By Sherwyn Warren
Delivered to The Chicago Literary Club
April 21, 2003
SUMMARY:
Tobacco, native to the Western Hemisphere, has become widely used in various forms
throughout the world, with significant social, economic, cultural and health consequences. It
has complex, incompletely understood chemical and pharmacological effects, one of which is
addiction to its nicotine. We present tobacco's history and influence on art, politics, law and
medicine.
Two red hats. He had been told these would be popular with the Chinese. This tiny
island encountered after such a long journey was obviously not the large, highly civilized
country of China, but the natives might be able to direct him. He dressed in silk, rowed
ashore with his linguist, Jewish convert Luis de Torres, proclaimed the land for the king of
Spain, exchanged the red hats for gifts of fruit, beads and dried leaves and learned of a larger
island to the west with gold, spices, large ships and merchants. The date was October 12,
1492. Louis de Torres and Christopher Columbus tasted the fruit, kept the beads to show
their patrons and discarded the dried leaves overboard. On October 28, Columbus reached
the larger island of Cuba. There, he sent an expedition ashore in search of the Great Khan,
carrying royal letters of introduction from the king of Spain. The expedition returned with
the letters undelivered but with reports of many oddities. The original log of this voyage has
been lost, but a transcription from 1514 by Father Bartolome de Las Casas records an
encounter thusly:
These two Christians [Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres] met many people on the road,
the men always with a firebrand in their hands, and certain herbs to take their smokes.
These are dried herbs, put in a certain leaf, dry also, after the fashion of a musket
made of paper, such as boys make on the feast of the Holy Ghost, lit at one end and
at the other they chew or suck and take in with their breath that smoke which dulls
their flesh and intoxicates; and so they say that they do not feel weariness. These
muskets or whatever we call them they call tobacco.
Father Bartolome subsequently traveled to the New World and wrote "I have known
Spaniards in this isle of Hispaniola who were wont to take tobacco and being reproved for it
and told that it was a vice, they replied that it was not in their power to stop taking it." This
man of the church thus not only designated the practice a vice but he recognized its
addictivness. Alas for poor Rodrigo de Jerez. Upon returning to Spain his addiction came to
the attention of the Inquisition and he was sentenced to three years in prison.
Smoking was only one way European explorers found tobacco used. It was also sniffed,
chewed, eaten, drunk, smeared over bodies, used in eye drops and enemas and as poultices.
It was blown into warriors' faces before battle, over fields before planting and over women
before sex. Medicine men or shamans used it as intoxicants for themselves or their patients,
as offerings to the Gods and for healing rituals.
The plant originated in the Peruvian/Ecuadorian Andes, 3,000 to 5,000 B. C. By the time
of Columbus, it was grown throughout the Western Hemisphere. In the high altitudes of the
Andes it was dried and ground into a snuff. In the moist Amazon, tobacco was chewed. In
the more temperate areas, drying and smoking as a cigar or in a pipe was customary. It was
used because it allayed hunger and in small doses its intoxicant properties would produce a
mild euphoria. Europeans were acquainted with burning herbs as incense and perfuming
votive candles, but sucking on a smoldering wad of tobacco was an entirely new experience,
described by Jacques Cartier after his encounter with the Iroquois Indians of Canada in 1534
as "hot and peppery."
Most early European encounters were by Spanish and Portuguese sailors. Many became
smokers of cigars and as voyages became more frequent they brought back tobacco and
displayed the habit to inhabitants of Iberia. Although many people were alarmed by the
devil-like allusion of smoke emerging from a person's body orifices, others were intrigued by
stories of the medicinal qualities of the plant and its unusual appearance. Seeds were carried
to Spain and Portugal in the 1550s and planted in royal gardens.
Jean Nicot, Lord of Villemain, was French ambassador at the court of Portugal.
He purchased tobacco seeds in Lisbon and planted them in the embassy garden.
The following year he sent seeds to the Cardinal of Lorraine and other people of
importance in France with letters extolling the medicinal properties of the plant. Returning to
France in 1561, he presented some plants to the queen, Catherine de Medici. By 1570, the
plant was designated as Nicotiana, after Nicot. Ironically, the plant was first brought to
France in 1556 or 1557 by Andre Thevet, a Protestant missionary in Brazil.
In 1565, Nicholas Monardes, a doctor from Seville, published a book, Joyful News of
Our Newe Founde Worlde, extolling tobacco as a near miraculous cure for a host of
diseases afflicting man and beast. This work, translated into Latin, English, French and
Italian, stimulated wide interest in using tobacco in its many forms. Spanish and Portuguese
smoked the leaves as cigars, French inhaled it as snuff and in England and the Low Countries
it was smoked in ladle-shaped pipes, usually made of clay.
During the latter half of the 1500's tobacco consumption rapidly rose throughout Europe.
Spanish and Portuguese sailors had brought seeds to France, Portugal, Spain and England by
1565--and also introduced the plant into Africa, Japan and the Middle East. By 1600,
European settlers in Santo Domingo, Cuba and Brazil were cultivating tobacco. In England
tobacco was popularized at Queen Elizabeth's court by such dandies as Walter Raleigh;
demand was met by growing the plant in England as well as by pirating the superior product
from Spanish trading vessels. The habit spread throughout English society.
James I, who succeeded Elizabeth in 1602, was appalled by smoking. He published a
pamphlet, "A Counterblaste to Tobacco" which characterized it as "stinking and unsavory"
and decried dependence upon it so that "yet can you neither be merry at an Ordinary nor
lascivious in the brothels if you lack tobacco to provoke your appetite." Shortly thereafter he
raised the import tax by 4,000%.
King Philip III of Spain attempted to control and profit from tobacco by restricting its
cultivation to Venezuela, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico and Cuba, by taxing sale of the leaf,
forbidding sale of the seeds and concentrating manufacture in the Spanish cities of Cadiz and
Seville. The first government-run factory was opened in a former women's prison in Seville
in 1620. Initially the workers were men. Later, women were employed.
Enterprising and adventuresome Walter Raleigh sought to establish an English colony in
the Western hemisphere. He commissioned Thomas Harriot to lay out and publicize a
settlement in a part of the New World claimed by England and named for the Virgin Queen.
Beginning with a sales brochure, "A Brief and True Report of the Newe Founde Land of
Virginia", published in 1587 attempts were made to lure English settlers. The first two
settlements, at Roanoke on Chesapeake Bay, ended disastrously.
In 1607, a third attempt was made at nearby Jamestown and seemed headed for a similar
fate until John Rolfe, one of its residents, decided to raise a cash crop. In violation of the
Spanish embargo on tobacco seeds from their colonies, Rolfe had somehow obtained seeds
from Trinidad of Nicotiana Tabacum, which was more flavorful than the Nicotiana
Rustica smoked by the North American Indians. In the Virginia soil they flourished. Rolfe
enlisted the aid of the natives to teach him their methods of cultivation. In 1614 he married
Algonquian Indian Chief Powhatan's eighteen year old daughter, Matoaka, better know by her
nickname Pocahontas, which means "frisky and playful." That year also Rolfe sent his first
shipments of tobacco to London with the first brand names. Oronoco was strong and
Sweetscented was mild. Given preferential customs treatment by the king, they were a great
success. In 1615, Jamestown exported 2,300 pounds; in 1620, 40,000 pounds; in 1627,
500,000 pounds. In 1616, Rolfe and Pocahontas, now call Rebecca, went to England, where
the vivacious Indian princess became ill, died and was buried.
Tobacco became so profitable for the Americans that there were not enough colonists in
Virginia to cultivate this labor-intensive crop. A solution appeared in the harbor in 1619
when a Dutch slave ship dropped anchor. The colonists bought 20 African slaves, paid for
with tobacco. Two years later, nubile lasses were delivered to Jamestown for 120 pounds of
"best leaf" tobacco per wife. By 1735, in parts of the Chesapeake region slaves made up
more than 35 percent of the population.
Until 1817, Spain controlled the processing of all tobacco grown in its colonies. The
factory opened in Seville in 1620 was replace by a larger Fabrica del Tobacos in
1687. In 1728 Spain started a third factory. When completed in 1758 as a walled city, it was
the largest industrial building in the world, eventually employing 5,000 people. Millions of
pounds of snuff and smoking products were produced each year. In Spain they were sold in
Estancos, state run tobacco shops. Exports were taxed.
The Spanish produced three cigars: smallest and cheapest Cadiz; medium size Papantes
and largest and most expensive Puros. Tobacco unsuitable for cigars and scraps and shreds
were called "Tobacco Picado." Poor people rolled this in paper and smoked it as "Papelote."
The French adopted the idea, but naturally gave it a different name. Theophile Gautier, in his
1833 book, Les Jeunes-France gave them the enduring appellation cigarette. Prosper
Merimee also wrote about the turbulent early 1800`s, when Napolean invaded Spain and was
opposed by the British and by smuggling Bandoleros. In his novel, Carmen, a young
hussy, works in the cigarette factory. Georges Bizet enlisted librettists Henri Meilhac and
Ludovic Halevy for the popular opera.
By 1817 Spain had lost most of its American possessions and allowed Cuba to produce
finished cigars. In 1845 cigars surpassed sugar as Cuba's largest export. Tobacco was grown
and used world-wide. The emperor of Japan planted seeds in the royal garden in 1596.
Latakia, a Turkish-grown, smoke cured tobacco became so popular that it was imported back
into the United States.
Around the world, tobacco was consumed in many ways: wrapped within layers of
tobacco leaves as cigars or within paper as cigarettes; incinerated in water pipes called
narghile or hooka or dry pipes made of clay, meerschaum, gourds, briar roots, corn cobs, or
whatever else could be devised; inhaled into the nose as snuff; stuffed beneath the lip or
cheek and sucked; brewed and drunk or used as an enema; made into a paste and rubbed into
the gums; applied as a poultice; or chewed as "flat plug, navy, twist or fine cut" preparations.
An important event occurred in Caswell County, N.C, on the Slade brothers farm in 1839.
A slave, Stephen, fell asleep while tending a fire to cure tobacco. When he awoke, the fire
was almost out. He threw hot charcoal on it. The high heat caused the drying leaves to
become a bright yellow color. This tobacco, called "Bright" burned with an acidic rather than
an alkaline gas. Acid nicotine, when inhaled into the lungs, is absorbed almost
instantaneously through the alveolar sacs. Other growers adopted the Slade formula and
Bright tobacco has become the most common constituent of cigarettes.
The safety match was another important development. Tapers dipped in sulfur and animal
fat and ignited by friction were used since Greek and Roman times. But they were dangerous.
In 1829 Samuel Jones, an English apothecary, invented the safer "Lucifer match." In the
United States, Joshua Pusey and Henry C. Traute developed the cardboard safety match in
1892. These were used as miniature billboards. They became so inexpensive that the Office
of Price Administration directed that a book of twenty matches be given free with every pack
of cigarettes sold during World War II.
Safety matches combined with pocket-size cigarette gave unprecedented portability to
tobacco smoking.
Wars influenced tobacco consumption. During the Crimean war of 1853 to 1856 Russia
fought an alliance of Turkish, English, French, Austrian and Italian soldiers. British and
French soldiers began smoking dark-leaf cigarettes wrapped in special papers popular with the
Turks and Russians. Scotsman Robert Gloag, paymaster for British forces, noticed the
popularity of cigarettes. In 1856, he opened the first cigarette factory in Great Britain, Gloag
and Company. Tobacco dust was pressed by hand into cane mouthpieces and wrapped in
yellow tissue paper which was turned in at the ends to prevent the dust from escaping.
In the United States, smoking tastes were influenced by the Mexican War of 1846.
Soldiers were exposed to the flavorful Central American and Cuban tobaccos and cigars.
Some, such as Ulysses Grant adopted the habit. During the Civil War both Union and
Confederate soldiers rolled mixed shreds of Bright and Burley tobaccos into hand made
cigarettes. A North Carolina farmer, John R. Green, set up a granulating shop near Durham
to serve this market. After the war, Green produced the smoking tobacco under the name of
Bull Durham. He advertised it widely, marketed it aggressively, gave away premiums,
obtained endorsements and became the largest tobacco manufacturer in the country. He died
fifteen years later, turning over the operation with its 900 employees to William T. Blackwell.
Despite the popularity of Bull Durham after the Civil War, in the United States most
tobacco was chewed or sucked in contrast to Europe and Asia where it was smoked or
snuffed. Charles Dickens toured the United States in 1842 and wrote: " those two odious
practices of chewing and expectorating soon became most offensive and sickening. In all
the public places of America, this filthy custom is recognized. In the courts the judge has
his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his In public buildings, visitors
are implored to squirt the essence of their quids or plugs into the national spittoons."
When American soldiers were faced with the confines of trench warfare during World War I,
such habits were replaced by the more esthetic smoking. When they returned from that
conflict they found the euphoria of alcohol prohibited. Tobacco's effects seemed appealing.
During World War II cigarettes were accepted as so routine they were packed with individual
C and K food rations.
In the United States, cigarettes were initially smoked mainly in northern cities. They were
first manufactured in New York by F. S. Kinney in 1864 and called Sweeet Caporals. Lewis
Ginter, a New Yorker, moved to Richmond and joined John F. Allen to manufacture
cigarettes closer to tobacco production. Allen & Ginter rolled their cigarettes tightly in
quality papers and packed them in packages with small lithographed cardboard inserts. The
cards, printed in such series as "Fifty Scenes of Perilous Occupations," "Flags of All
Nations," famous battles, baseball players, actresses, etc. became popular and sales boomed.
But ninety percent of the price of the cigarettes went for labor: a skilled worker could roll by
hand no more than four or five cigarettes a minute, about 3,000 in a ten hour day. By 1886,
900 young women worked for the company. Quality varied and the company felt responsible
for supervising the health and morality of the women, a constant concern.
To overcome this, Allen & Ginter offered a prize of $75, 000 for a machine that could
reliably produce cigarettes. As early as 1867, the Susini machine claimed to make 3,600
cigarettes an hour. It and others were failures. In 1880, 21 year old James Albert Bonsack, a
mechanic from Lynchberg, Virginia patented a design for a cigarette rolling machine. Early
models of the machine had production problems and Allen & Ginter rejected it.
Another soldier returning to Orange County North Carolina from the Civil War was
former gunnery officer and prisoner of war Washington Duke. In 1859 he had opened a
tobacco processing factory on his homestead near Durham Station. When he returned in 1865
crops and livestock had been looted but a small crop of Bright tobacco remained in the barn.
Duke and his three sons produced chewing plug, packed it into muslin bags labeled Pro
Bono Publico, meaning for the public good, and peddled it in eastern North Carolina.
Two more factories were added to the homestead; producing 15,000 pounds in 1866, 125,000
pounds in 1872. In 1874, Duke moved operations to Durham. With his sons James, Ben and
Brodie he incorporated in 1878 as W. Duke and Sons. Washington Duke retired in 1880 and
James became president.
James Buchanan Duke, named after the fifteenth president of the United States and known
as Buck, was perceptive, hard working and shrewd. He recognized the increasing popularity
of cigarettes and established a factory for their manufacture in Durham. Buck decided that
lowering the price of cigarettes by mechanizing their manufacture would increase the market
and his business. He learned of Bonsack's unsuccessful efforts to win Allen and Ginter's
prize, contacted the inventor and offered to work with him to perfect his cigarette making
machine. Bonsack set up a workshop in Duke's factory and worked with mechanic William
O'Brien to fix the problems. On April 30, 1884, a day known as the birthday of the modern
cigarette, the Bonsack machine turned out 120,000 cigarettes in a 10 hour day, the output of
40 experienced hand rollers.
In 1885, Duke contracted to use the machines on a royalty basis and, in a codicil,
Bonsack agreed to secret rebates if he leased machines to other manufacturers. By 1889, W.
Duke and Company was the largest cigarette producer in the United States. Buck Duke
convinced his major competitors, Allen and Gintner of Richmond, William Kimball and
Company of Rochester, Kinney Tobacco Company of New York City and Goodwin and
Company of New York City to consolidate into the American Tobacco Company. He became
president. This Tobacco trust bought out more than 250 other tobacco companies and paid
others not to compete. By 1900 it produced more than 90 percent of American cigarettes, 80
percent of snuff, 62 percent of plug and 60 percent of pipe tobacco. It integrated vertically
with licorice paste used in chewing tobacco, tin foil, cotton bags, wooden boxes and of course
the production and processing of tobacco.
Only cigar production remained in the hands of small, independent companies.
Trust-busting President Theodore Roosevelt brought suit against the American Tobacco
Company in July, 1907 for violating the Anti-Trust Act of 1890. On May 29, 1911, two
weeks after ruling against Standard Oil Company, the U.S. Supreme Court held Duke and his
tobacco trust guilty and ordered its breakup. The court turned to Duke to help fashion the
remedy. Within eight months a plan was approved. The core businesses were divided into
Liggett & Myers, Lorillard and a smaller American Tobacco Company. A number of
subsidiaries were cut loose to operate on their own, including United Cigar Stores,
British-American Tobacco and R. J. Reynolds Company. Voting rights were reassigned and
restrictive covenants dissolved. Idle and morose, Duke decided to endow little Trinity
College, not far from his Durham birthplace, if the school agreed to adopt his name and
become a university of national rank. They accepted. A statue of recognition, cigar, not
cigarette in hand, stands in front of the administration building.
The indefatigable entrepreneur then turned his energies to the electric power and gas
business.
Untied from each other, the companies began to compete for market share and to enlarge
the market. Duke had gone beyond such homey devices as picture cards, pennants and
coupons enclosed with the cigarettes by advertising in magazines, newspapers, billboards and
posters. Women were identified as a market and targeted. Chicagoan Albert Lasker urged
women to "reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet." Forty years later another Chicagoan, Leo
Burnett developed the virile image of the taciturn Marlboro cowboy.
Meanwhile, people began to question tobacco's effect on its users. As a medical student
in 1919, Alton Ochsner was shown a patient with primary lung cancer and told he was
unlikely ever to see this disease again. In 1936, Ochsner saw six patients with lung cancer.
In 1986 I probably saw ten times that number in my thoracic surgical practice. In 1939,
pathologist Franz Hermann Muller of the University of Cologne concluded from his studies
that the increase in smoking since World War I ran parallel with the increase of lung cancer.
The May 27, 1950 issue of the American Medical Association Journal JAMA
contained an article by Morton Levin of the New York State Institute for the Study of
Malignant Diseases showing a much higher cancer incidence among smokers. A second
article by surgeons Ernst Wynder and Evarts Graham reported interviews of 684 lung cancer
cases and found that 96.5 per cent were heavy smokers. Four months later the British
Medical Journal published a study by epidemiologists Richard Doll and A. Bradford
Hill reporting that smokers of 25 or more cigarettes a day were fifty times as likely as
non-smokers to develop lung cancer.
E. Cuyler Hammond was hired as an epidemiologist by the American Cancer Society. He
published "Trends in Cancer Mortality" in 1948, which showed that lung cancer had become
the most prevalent and lethal form of the disease. Dr. Ochsner, then president of the
organization, pressed him to study its relation to smoking. Organizing the society's
volunteers, Hammond studied 4,854 deaths among 187,766 American white males between 50
and 69 and found smokers had a 52% to 75% higher death rate than non-smokers. The more
a person smoked, the greater was the risk of dying. Only 15 of the 448 lung cancer deaths
occurred in individuals who had never smoked. Doll and Hill found 81 lung cancer deaths
among 60,000 British doctors; smokers were 20 times more likely to be affected.
That tobacco smoke was carcinogenic was not difficult to demonstrate. Working in a lab
at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Ernst Wydner collected the tar from
mechanically puffed cigarettes and painted it on the shaved backs of mice. The animals
developed malignant tumors in the painted areas. Pathologist Oscar Auerbach and Cuyler
Hammond taught beagle dogs to smoke and studied their lungs after two-and-a-half years. A
significant number of the dogs that smoked the equivalent of two packs per day developed
invasive tumors of the bronchial tubes. The findings, instead of being presented at a
scientific meeting, were promptly proclaimed at an American Cancer Society news conference
at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in 1970. Because of this premature publicity to non-scientists,
publication in refereed medical journals was delayed for more than a year, allowing tobacco
industry flacks to cast doubt on the results.
In 1952, after the convincing epidemiological studies were published, the British
Medical Journal editorialized that "it was incumbent on tobacco manufacturers" to
identify and remove the carcinogenic agents "so smoking will become a less dangerous
occupation than it appears to be now." This iterated a hope by smokers, doctors, scientists
and the tobacco industry for a so-called "safe" cigarette.
Tobacco users had been concerned with convenience and style: the placement of spitoons
and ash trays, the foppishness of snuffboxes, the elegance of cigarette cases, cigar clubs,
drawing rooms for ladies and non-smokers, the panache of fashionable brands and
accoutrements. Now there was a new concern, not just good health or good feelings, but life
and death itself. Public health agencies had to become involved, as did voluntary health
organizations with their zeal and public support. The Reader's Digest magazine
began to publish articles on the health hazards of smoking and Consumers Union measured
and reported the levels of tars and nicotine in various brands of cigarettes.
The botanical genus Nicotiana consists of more than 60 species, all native to the Western
Hemisphere, Australia or the South Pacific islands. It is a member of the nightshade family,
Solanum, which contains a total of about 2,000 species. Many of these produce alkaloids,
complex chemical substances with pharmaceutical and consciousness altering properties, such
as belladonna, atropine, henbane, jimson weed and mandrake. It also includes eggplants,
peppers, tomatoes and potatoes. The two commercially most valuable species of tobacco, N.
tabacum and N. rustica, have long been extensively hybridized and cultivated. Growing
conditions and even location of leaves on the plant affect the chemical and physical
characteristics of tobacco.
More than 4,000 chemicals have been identified in tobacco and tobacco smoke. Tar from
tobacco smoke contains 43 known carcinogens, including benzopyrene, cadmium, benzene,
arsenic and nitrosamines. Nitrosamines are also present in the gaseous phase of burning
tobacco. Nicotine is tobacco's most common alkaloid. Dark, air-cured and fire-cured types
contain 4 to 4.5 percent, cigar filler and Burley 3.5 to 4 percent, flue-cured 2.5 to 3 percent,
Maryland 2 percent and Turkish less than 2 percent. N. rustica has been grown with up to 10
percent
After the editorial in the British Medical Journal, the tobacco industry was
convinced they could make cigarettes safe by discovering the toxic components and
eliminating them. Publicly, they questioned the validity of the accumulating evidence but
they set up a Tobacco Research Council to study health related effects of tobacco. Tobacco
companies also set up their own research departments and contracted for independent research
studies. Meanwhile they introduced low tar and nicotine cigarettes and filtered cigarettes.
Filters were made of cotton, crepe paper, vegetable cellulose and contained flavorings,
charcoal and even asbestos. In 1953, filter cigarettes constituted 3 percent of sales, by 1960
51 percent, by 1980 92 percent. Tobacco advertisements declared health benefits for the
filtered devices.
By 1957 British-American Tobacco and Brown and Williamson were doing research at
BAT's laboratories in Southampton, trying to determine the toxic substances associated with
smoking and develop a "safe" cigarette. Initially this was driven by scientific concerns;
however company lawyers quickly became involved in planning and in many cases directing
scientific research projects. They appeared particularly interested in preventing potentially
damaging research results from being disclosed in litigation. Code words were devised.
Lung cancer was dubbed "Zephyr" and suspected carcinogens were called "Borstal" and
"3,4,9,10-DBP." BAT held periodic research conferences so its scientists from around the
world could meet and discuss developments. Among these were Southampton in 1962 and
1967, Montreal in 1967, Hilton Head 1968, Kronberg, Germany 1969, St. Adele, Quebec
1970, Chelwood, England 1972, Duck Key, Florida 1974, Merano Italy, 1975, Sydney,
Australia 1978, London 1979, Pichlarn, Austria 1981, Montebello, Canada 1982. None of the
findings presented at these conferences was ever reported to the scientific community. Code
phrases were rampant.
In addition to work conducted in its own laboratories, BAT contracted for extensive
studies by the Battelle research institutes in Geneva, Switzerland and Frankfurt am Main,
Germany. The Swiss laboratory embarked on a series of projects in the late 1950's
designated Hippo I and Hippo II, studying the effects of nicotine. Elegant experiments, using
rats, mice, cats, rabbits and humans, elucidated addictive and other pharmacological properties
of nicotine. These included its effect on the hypothalamus of the brain, adrenal hormones,
water balance, weight control, sex hormones, stress levels, blood pressure, drug dependency,
absorption and excretion. In 1963 the United States Surgeon General's Advisory Committee
on Smoking and Health was preparing its report. BAT and B&W executives discussed
whether to submit their research findings to the Committee, but decided not to do so. None
of this research has appeared in scientific publications although some of the findings preceded
published work by 20 years. The thrust of this research was Project Ariel, what would be
now called a virtual cigarette.. Patented in the United States in 1966 and 1967 and assigned
to the Battelle Institute to disguise its true sponsors, it was designed to deliver to a smoker
the addictive nicotine without other unhealthful tobacco products. It was never marketed.
The German operation, known as Project Janus, was designed to examine the toxicity of
specific cigarette components and of different proposed modifications. Set up in 1965, it
wound down by 1978; apparently hope for a "safe" cigarette was abandoned. None of the
findings were reported in scientific literature. How then do we know about these projects?
The short answer is that the information was in a box of purloined documents delivered
anonymously to Professor Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco.
Shortly thereafter they were posted on the internet, then edited and published in the July 19,
1995 issue of JAMA and as a book, The Cigarette Papers in 1996.
Allegedly they had been copied by Merrell Williams, a paralegal working on Brown and
Williamson documents for the Wyatt, Tarrant and Combs law firm in Louisville.
Nicotine, chemically C10H14N2, is a double-ringed, aromatic hydrocarbon with a
molecular weight of 162.23. It has unique pharmacology, acting as both a stimulant and
depressant. A concentrated form, Black leaf 40, is a potent insecticide. The pure alkaloid is
a clear, volatile, oily, alkaline liquid that turns brown on exposure to air. It has the smell of
tobacco. It is distilled from burning tobacco and carried on "tar" droplets and in the vapor
phase. Air-cured tobacco, used in pipe and cigars and for chewing and snuff, has an alkaline
pH and nicotine is absorbed in the mouth. Even if the smoke is inhaled, the nicotine will not
be absorbed in the lungs. Flue-cured tobacco, used in cigarettes is acidic and the nicotine
exists in an ionized form, which is rapidly and almost completely absorbed through the
millions of alveolar sacs in the lungs. Nicotine is also absorbed through the skin and can be
used therapeutically in patches. Such absorption also accounts for cases of nicotine toxicity
in field workers and those using nicotine-containing pesticides. From the stomach and
intestine, it is absorbed but largely metabolized and deactivated on first pass through the liver.
Nicotine changes cardiovascular, neural, endocrine and skeletal muscle functions. Effects
depend upon dose, rate of administration, tolerance level and rate of elimination. At the
cellular level, at doses achieved by the usual smoker, it stimulates the autonomic nerve
ganglia and neuromuscular junctions as well as nicotinic receptors in the central nervous
system. Hormone secretion from the adrenal glands, anterior and posterior pituitary glands is
stimulated. Pulse rate and blood pressure are increased. Gastrointestinal motor tone and
activity are increased. In toxic doses it can cause muscle tremors and convulsions. With
chronic use, tolerance develops to some but not all of its actions.
In the central nervous system nicotine affects production and deactivation of dopamine
and serotonin, major neurotransmitters. It acts selectively in areas of the brain which are
considered pleasure and reward centers. As observed by Father Bartholome, chronic use
frequently results in addiction or drug dependence. Inveterate smokers adjust number and
depth of puffs, frequency and types of smokes to keep blood nicotine levels at a remarkably
constant level, allowing themselves mood elevating kicks or hits from newly lit cigarettes.
As early as the 1950s, epidemiology data from around the world indicated a causal
relation between tobacco and not only cancer, but also decreased life expectancy. Insurance
statistics as well as public health studies showed up to 15 years deficit. Risk of death within
five years for smokers versus non-smokers was two times overall--20 times for lung cancer
and mouth cancer, two to four times for bladder cancer and cervical cancer, three times for
heart disease, and between two and five times for strokes.
In June, 1956, United States Surgeon General Leroy Burney directed a study by the
National Institutes of Health, American Cancer Society and American Heart Association. It
concluded that cigarette smoking was the cause of the marked increase in lung cancer. A
June 1, 1961 letter to President John F. Kennedy, signed by presidents of the American
Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Public Health Association and the
National Tuberculosis Association, urged formation of a commission to "study the widespread
implications of the tobacco problem." Surgeon General Luther Terry appointed the 11
members of the commission on October 27, 1962. On January 11, 1964 it published its
findings as: Smoking and Health. Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon
General of the Public Health Service.
This report was a watershed in the anti-tobacco movement. It unequivocally showed a
causal relationship between tobacco smoking and cancer. With heart disease, benign
pulmonary disease, ulcers and low birth weight pregnancies it ascribed association. It stated:
"The habitual use of tobacco is related primarily to psychological and social drives, reinforced
and perpetuated by the pharmacological actions of nicotine." The report purposely did not
enunciate recommendations for action, but it galvanized anti-tobacco activities. Health
warning labels were mandated for cigarette packs, advertising was eliminated from broadcast
media, taxes were raised, sales were regulated, voluntary health agencies vigorously
campaigned against tobacco. All of these resulted in a decline in cigarette sales.
C. Everett Koop, surgeon general under Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1988, took up the
anti-tobacco cause. His office issued seven reports during his tenure, linking smoking with
cancer, heart disease, chronic bronchitis and emphysema; showing risks of environmental or
second-hand smoke and of smokeless tobacco. He proclaimed "cigarette smoking is the chief
preventable cause of death in our society." The influential 1988 report branded nicotine a
highly addictive substance. His successor, Joycelyn Elders, reported in 1994 that most
smokers became addicted by age 18, few after age 20. Cigarette companies had known this
for decades and actively targeted 15 and 16 year olds. As Oscar Wilde said: "A cigarette is
the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied."
Since the first Food and Drug law in 1906, Congress has refused to regulate tobacco or
nicotine. There are no legal restrictions on what may be added to tobacco products.
Additives include humectants such as glycerol and glycol, ammonia, salts, sugars, cocoa,
acids, flavorings especially licorice oils, fragrances and substances already in unprocessed
tobacco. Among the last is addictive nicotine.
David Kessler, M.D., J.D., M.B.A., was appointed commissioner of the Food and Drug
Administration at age 39 by George Herbert Walker Bush in 1990. By 1994, he had
concluded that cigarette companies were manipulating nicotine levels in their products in
order to addict and satisfy the addiction of their customers. Kessler felt certain he would not
be able to obtain congressional action to regulate nicotine levels, so he decided to designate
tobacco control as an issue of children's health. He issued FDA regulations to control
advertising, require photo identification to purchase cigarettes and restrict marketing. In
August, 1995, tobacco companies filed a lawsuit in federal court in North Carolina to block
the FDA rules. Although the FDA's power to regulate nicotine was upheld by the Federal
District court, that decision was reversed by the Court of Appeals and by a 5-4 decision of
the Supreme Court March 20, 2000. A disappointed David Kessler listening to the verdict
had already resigned to become dean of the Yale University School of Medicine.
American courts have not always favored tobacco companies. First substantial verdict
against them was $400,000 on behalf of Rose Cipollone by a New Jersey jury in 1988. It
was upheld 7 to 2 by the United States Supreme Court. This has encouraged a stream of
successful suits not only by individuals but by the States for the health consequences of
smoking and with judgments totaling many billions of dollars.
Two red hats exchanged for a handful of dried leaves. Eastern and Western Hemispheres
trading: horses for turkeys, firearms for maize and potatoes; measles and smallpox for syphilis
and Chagas disease; alcohol for tobacco. Generations trying to balance pleasures and
problems, expected and unexpected, foreseeable and unforeseeable. The saga continues.