Tobacco Control 1998;7:315–319 315 Tob Control: first published as 10.1136/tc.7.3.315 on 1 September 1998. Downloaded from

INDUSTRY WATCH

Dark secrets of tobacco company exposed

This article was Inside the restricted laboratory compound on BAT declined to comment on the released by the the south coast of England, five senior scientists documents, collected for Minnesota’s recently Associated Press on 12 for BAT Industries, the world’s second-biggest settled lawsuit against makers. The September 1998. cigarette maker, were devising ways to make it British conglomerate referred questions to Because of its harder for people to quit smoking. Brown & Williamson. relevance to the At the start of the “brainstorming” session Dr Sharon Boyse, director of scientific com- American Medical on 11 April 1980, Dr Robin A Crellin, the munications at Brown & Williamson, said Association report and team research leader, oVered an insight. “BAT many of the research reports represented pure the accompanying should learn to at itself as a drug science with “no application in a commercial editorial published elsewhere in this issue company,” he said, “rather than a tobacco sense.” of “Tobacco Control” company.” After being read passages from several docu- (see pages 215 and Just eight months earlier, BAT scientists had ments, Boyse remarked: “A lot of these studies 281), we are laid out some basic assumptions about are experimental—to try to understand the reproducing it . A 28 Aug 1979 memo reads: “We underlying process of smoke chemistry—and here.—ED are searching explicitly for a socially acceptable may not necessarily turn into products.” addictive product involving: a pattern of However, the 5000 pages of memos, letters repeated consumption; a product which is and reports—pulled by the AP from among 7 likely to involve repeated handling; the million BAT documents made public at the essential constituent is most likely to be Minneapolis tobacco document repository— nicotine or a ‘direct’ substitute for it.” show that Y-1 tobacco became than a Public disclosure of once-secret industry theory. documents has shown that Big Tobacco The papers outline Y-1’s creation, detailing privately considered tobacco addictive and not only the nuts-and-bolts science but the harmful at least four decades ago, even as it breezy chat at gatherings of researchers in brushed aside claims that it manipulated nico- locales such as Rio de Janeiro and Sydney, and tine in cigarettes to hook smokers. the private strategy sessions of BAT’s highest Now, a review by the Associated Press (AP) executives in London.

of thousands of BAT documents—some These are the Y-1 papers, and this is the http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/ stamped “CONFIDENTIAL,” “SECRET,” and story they tell. “S-H-R-E-D”—oVers new insight into the scale The wording was as dry as a warning label and sophistication of eVorts to keep millions of on a . users hooked on nicotine, and the motives But the conclusion of BAT nicotine report driving a project that created a more addictive No RD-437-R became the basis for research tobacco. that led to the invention of Y-1 tobacco. Taking the reader inside the once- It read: “Increased smoker response is asso- impregnable industry, the papers disclose: ciated with nicotine reaching the brain more + Why BAT lost its position as the world’s No quickly.” 1 cigarette maker to Philip Morris and its It meant: The faster nicotine reaches a brand in the 1960s (short answer: smoker’s brain, the bigger the drug rush—and a nicotine breakthrough) the more likely the smoker will come back for on September 25, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. + Why BAT and its aYliates spent 17 years more. and tens of millions of dollars to create a Dr JD Backhurst, who delivered the report new, nicotine-rich, harder-to-kick tobacco on 30 September 1966, at BAT’s laboratory in (to outdo Marlboro’s nicotine technology Southampton, England, had confirmed that and to produce more nicotine at lower cost) nicotine exists in two chemical forms—not + How vital it was to the industry to forestall one, as had been generally assumed. broader government regulation of tobacco The first is the “bound” form, which the products—so vital that BAT’s scientific and body has trouble absorbing. marketing eVorts eclipsed reports by The other is the “” form, which passes company researchers on the health dangers instantly through the mouth, throat and lungs of nicotine. and into the bloodstream. Free nicotine BAT, formerly , did reaches the brain faster, and, Backhurst finally develop its super-tobacco, a genetically demonstrated, gives the smoker a more addict- altered variety with the code name Y-1. ing “kick.” This high-nicotine tobacco is used today by If BAT wanted to make it tougher for people Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., BAT’s to give up its cigarettes, perhaps all the American subsidiary and the third largest US company needed to do was increase the free cigarette maker. Y-1 is in nine brands sold in nicotine in them. the United States: Prime, Summit, Raleigh Philip Morris, BAT’s competitor, already King Size, Raleigh 100s, Plain King had discovered that by adding ammonia to its Size, Plains, Raleigh XLP, Private cigarettes, it could increase the ratio of free Stock and Richland. nicotine, and consequently the popularity of its 316 Industry Watch Tob Control: first published as 10.1136/tc.7.3.315 on 1 September 1998. Downloaded from

Marlboro brand. In a few years, sales of Marl- nicotine substitutes; even a “noninhalable boro, with ammonia added, propelled Philip cigarette.” Morris past BAT to become the world’s No 1 None of these ideas ever worked. The Y-1 cigarette manufacturer. papers suggest that by the late 1970s, BAT had BAT would research and use ammonia tech- all but given up on making a “safe” cigarette. nology, too. To this day, it says ammonia was Dr Robert A Sanford, then Brown & William- added to increase flavor. But the Y-1 papers son’s vice president of research, even show the company didn’t want to just follow discouraged toxicological testing of cigarette Philip Morris’ innovations—BAT wanted to go smoke in an 18 August 1980 letter to Dr Alan one up on its rival. Heard at BAT’s Southampton research center. To do that, it needed to know more about Research into “irritation and inhalation of nicotine. smoke,” he wrote, was a “dangerous area. Do So BAT’s scientists experimented with mice, not publish or circulate.” squirrel monkeys, beagles and mechanical It didn’t abandon nicotine. That’s why mouths. They stuck electrodes on adult smok- smokers smoked. ers and measured changes in their brain waves “If the nicotine delivery is reduced below a and heart rate. threshold ‘satisfaction’ level, then surely smok- They swapped findings at conferences held ers will question more readily why they are wherever BAT had overseas subsidiaries: indulging in an expensive habit,” wrote Green, Germany, Italy, Australia, Canada, Brazil and the senior BAT scientist, on 29 March 1976. the United States. He recommended the company divert atten- The objective was to “make the administra- tion from nicotine’s health risks and frame the tion of nicotine better,” wrote Dr SJ Green in a public health debate around the dangers of tar. 2 March 1967 memo. That meant “making the “It is advocated that every opportunity is taken to separate tar and nicotine in the minds of administration pleasanter or more convenient” consumers and legislators.” with fewer “undesirable physiological side The fear that public health oYcials might eVects.” press for drastic reduction of nicotine was so The Y-1 papers show BAT scientists already great that some BAT scientists even suggested had learned that nicotine—not just tar, as had the company diversify into other “mood- been thought—did bad things to people’s aVecting” substances: marijuana, tranquilizers arteries, hearts and brains. and the like. “Certain medical studies would seek to That never happened, but during the 11 blame nicotine for cardiovascular disease,” Dr April 1980 brainstorming session at BAT’s DJ Wood, a senior BAT scientist, wrote for a Southampton laboratory, Crellin noted that, nicotine presentation to BAT executives in

one day, such drugs might be “‘socialized’ like http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/ Chelwood, England, in September 1969. alcoholic drinking and .” Most of the studies were BAT’s own. Later There was another way BAT could address BAT research turned up something even its fear of nicotine regulation. It could change uglier—that nicotine might contribute to the form of nicotine in cigarettes. cancer. BAT knew that government regulators, Notes froma5February1979 research con- when measuring nicotine deliveries in tobacco ference in England read: “In the B14 products, do not distinguish between the experiment using three levels of nicotine highly addictive, free nicotine and the less citrate, the high nicotine is more tumorigenic addictive, bound nicotine. (tumor-creating) and possibly more malig- So, if BAT could chemically convert more of nant.” the bound nicotine in its products to free nico- Nine years later, an abstract of another BAT tine, it wouldn’t need to put as much nicotine on September 25, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. study, “Mutagenicity of cigarettes containing in cigarettes to keep smokers hooked. In fact, it added nicotine,” suggested a link between could promote a nicotine “reduction” while nicotine and carcinogens in tobacco smoke. actually giving cigarettes more nicotine kick. Independent studies have since confirmed Marlboro’s success proved the theory. Philip the danger. Although nicotine is not a carcino- Morris had added ammonia, causing the gen in its own right, other chemicals in burned conversion and giving smokers a stronger tobacco convert some nicotine into a nic-kick, which drove up sales. carcinogen, said Jack Henningfield, an BAT also began using ammonia in its prod- addiction specialist at the Johns Hopkins ucts, but found only a limited amount could be Medical School. used without making the smoke “very For BAT, this raised a worrisome question: noxious,” according to a 22 October 1979 what if governments ordered cigarette makers Brown & Williamson research report. to reduce nicotine in their products? Dr TR Shori, its author, suggested that free Twelve scientists from five countries met at nicotine in cigarettes might be increased by an inn in the Florida Keys, surrounded by altering the tobacco leaf itself. A high-nicotine lagoons, palm trees and the turquoise surf. It tobacco, he said, could cause “more nicotine to was a healthy setting for BAT’s January 1974 be available to the smoker as free nicotine.” conference on how to make a “safe” cigarette. “We could develop an ultra-low-tar cigarette The researchers discussed techniques to that produced considerably more impact than remove carcinogens from tobacco smoke: its delivery level (nicotine, as measured by the asbestos filters; microscopic holes in the government) would suggest,” he wrote. cigarette paper to dilute the smoke; synthetic And governments would be clueless. Industry Watch 317 Tob Control: first published as 10.1136/tc.7.3.315 on 1 September 1998. Downloaded from

To play its shell game, BAT needed a Brown & Williamson ran the project, said high-nicotine tobacco. The corporate giant Boyse, though “often, BAT Industries would turned for help to a smalltime tobacco grower, act as a coordination point.” Lloyd Vernon Jones, and his 18-acre farm in Under pressure to outdo Philip Morris’ Stantonsburg, . It was the ammoniated Marlboro cigarettes, BAT pushed summer of 1977, and farmers in America’s its Y-1 project into high gear in 1983. Southern tobacco belt were worried. Public High-nicotine seed and pollen were assigned health advocates were railing against tobacco; code numbers and shipped from the United cigarette consumption in the United States was States to aYliates around the world: Brazil, falling. Canada, Germany, Honduras, Chile, Ven- So when a representative for Brown & ezuela, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Pakistan, the Williamson showed up at Jones’ ranch house Y-1 papers show. and oVered to pay him handsomely to grow Brown & Williamson didn’t apply for the some new plants rich in nicotine, the farmer special US customs permit required to export obliged. tobacco seed and pollen, according to the US Tobacco genetics were about to take a quan- Department of Agriculture. tum leap: the five “Virginia” tobacco varieties The project didn’t stop with mild, Virginia sprouting in Jones’ fields had been genetically leaf. DNAP, the biotech company, also cross-bred to produce twice the nicotine of transferred nicotine-making genes from Y-1 regular leaf. and Y-2 into “burley” tobacco, the coarser leaf Two of the plant lines lived to maturity. used in cigar, pipe and . Brown & Williamson code-named them Y-1 The new burley varieties packed 50–75% and Y-2 (the latter was eventually supplanted more nicotine than the old lines, according to a by Y-1). Then, in 1983, it quietly took them 25 April 1990 DNAP memo. This away. high-nicotine burley was also used in cigarettes What happened to the tobacco once it left sold in the United States, the Y-1 papers show. the Jones farm? The Food and Drug Adminis- Accounting memos show that between 1985 tration (FDA) figured out part of the story in and 1991, Brown & Williamson grew at least the spring of 1994. 142 700 pounds [64 700 kg] of Y-1 and The agency learned that Brown & additional quantities of its Burley cousins in Williamson had taken Y-1 to DNA Plant Tech- nology, or DNAP, a biotech company in North Carolina, Kentucky, New Jersey and Cinnaminson, New Jersey. DNAP did more California—ignoring a price-support agree- genetics work to increase Y-1’s yield and ment between tobacco companies and the gov- disease resistance. ernment not to grow high-nicotine tobacco on American soil.

The FDA also learned that Y-1 was grown in http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/ Brazil and then used in five Brown & William- In the end, southern Brazil became the place son brands sold in the United States. Although for major production, the Y-1 papers show. this was legal, the agency was concerned Making Y-1 tobacco wasn’t cheap: the seed enough to disclose its findings to Congress in cost $2200 a pound (BAT would eventually June 1994. spend a total of $4 million producing seed). Brown & Williamson said it was only trying Research was costly; in 1989 alone, it totaled to make cigarettes safer, but, concerned about $9 million, the documents show. bad publicity, agreed to stop using Y-1. With travel, meetings, field surveys, farm But last December, the AP reported it had subsidies, shipping, patent applications, taste found tons of Y-1 and related high-nicotine testing, studies and other work, costs may have strains being cultivated in Brazil for the world climbed into the tens of millions of dollars. market by , BAT’s Brazilian Boyse said she did not know how much on September 25, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. subsidiary. In February, the AP reported money was spent on the entire Y-1 project. Brown & Williamson had resumed the use of Because Y-1’s yield was lower than regular high-nicotine tobaccos in American cigarettes Virginia leaf, Souza Cruz had to pay Brazilians in 1995. This time, Brown & Williamson said it 55% more for Y-1 than natural leaf, according would stop using Y-1 by 1 April 1999. to company correspondence. The Y-1 papers, however, show the project The documents suggest BAT regarded it as was much bigger than previously known—a money well spent. global operation coordinated by the highest “Y-1 gives 50 percent more nicotine per acre executives at BAT Industries’ world headquar- even with 20 percent less leaf yield,” read a 14 ters in London. May 1990 memo from Brown & Williamson’s The “Tobacco Strategy Review Team” research department. sessions included Sir Patrick Sheehy, who By 1987, Y-1 tobaccos were shipped to Fin- retired as chairman in 1996; Martin land, Norway, England, Germany and Switzer- Broughton, BAT Industries’ present chairman; land, and then to France, Malaysia and Ulrich Herter, now the managing director of Australia, for consumer trials. There was just BAT Industries; and RJ Pritchard, a former one problem. Brown & Williamson chairman and former Even when blended with weaker tobaccos, member of BAT Industries’ board of directors. Y-1 leaf packed too sharp a nicotine “jolt.” Chairmen of BAT’s subsidiaries in England, “Y-1 Lights products may be too strong for Germany, Brazil and Canada also participated lights smokers,” wrote Lynn A Walker, a in the meetings. BAT declined an AP request Brown & Williamson researcher, in a 17 to interview the executives. September 1990 memo. 318 Industry Watch Tob Control: first published as 10.1136/tc.7.3.315 on 1 September 1998. Downloaded from

If BAT didn’t do something to spread out ammonia,” he said, countering Boyse. “What Y-1’s nicotine more uniformly in a puV, the they were doing was making their cigarettes project might end up a colossal failure. more addictive.” Then a breakthrough came, quite literally, Thirty-seven days after Bevan’s “manipulate out of thin air. and modify” report, the chief executive officers The technique that made Y-1 more [CEOs] of America’s seven biggest tobacco palatable—and profitable—was discovered companies stood side by side and took an oath inside BAT’s Southampton laboratory in late to tell the truth to a committee of the US 1990. It’s known to scientists as “the expansion House of Representatives. process.” That spring morning, 14 April 1994, the This involves heating shreds of cured CEOs were asked, for the record, whether they tobacco with liquid carbon dioxide in a cham- believed nicotine was addictive. ber. The carbon dioxide turns to vapor and One by one, they said no. Thomas E puVs the dry tobacco up like Rice Krispies. Sandefur, the chief executive of Brown & Wil- Cigarette makers expand tobacco to save liamson, was sixth. “I believe that nicotine is money by giving customers more air and less not addictive,” he said. leaf. Less tobacco is supposed to mean the Sandefur, who died in 1996, was called back smoker gets less tar and nicotine. to testify before the committee on 27 June Y-1 reacted diVerently when bulked up. Not 1994. “Do you manipulate the nicotine levels only did Y-1 retain its nicotine power, it of your cigarettes?” asked Representative Tom released nicotine more gradually as it burned, Bliley of Virginia. giving the user a smoother smoke. Sure “We do not manipulate the nicotine levels of enough, BAT taste testers liked cigarettes our cigarettes,” Sandefur replied. “No, sir.” blended with expanded Y-1. The discovery pumped new life into the TODD LEWAN project. Associated Press During the next three years, BAT did at least *** three major studies on Y-1’s impact on the body. Its subsidiaries started adding expanded Y-1 to cigarettes in 1992, and by 1994 some BAT speaks out on nicotine $18.2 million worth of Y-1 leaf had been stock- Associated Press, 12 September 1998 piled in Brazil and the United States, according Statements on nicotine from internal files of Brown to a 9 June 1994 Brown & Williamson memo. & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and other aYliates of On 8 March 1994 BAT reviewed Y-1 tobac- the British conglomerate, BAT Industries plc; these co’s eVects on smokers. were among subpoenaed materials made public in

Nineteen copies of report No P-35 were dis- state lawsuits against cigarette makers: http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/ tributed to BAT executives in England, Brazil, “It is possible to remove all of the nicotine Germany and the United States. Each page from tobacco, but it has been our experience carried the warning, “Do not copy or show to that the resulting cigarette or cigar is an emas- unauthorized persons.” culated product which is neither palatable nor Dr PC Bevan, the author, wrote that he satisfying to the smoker.”—HR Hanmer, BAT hoped his report would “assist in pointing the research director, 14 October 1955. way towards being able to manipulate and “Moreover, nicotine is addictive. We are, modify the impact” of nicotine on smokers, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an and proceeded to lay out the results of two addictive drug eVective in the release of stress experiments—“Project NATO” and “Project mechanisms.”—Addison Yeaman, Brown & FELT”—in which testers had smoked Williamson vice president and general cigarettes blended with Y-1 tobacco. counsel, 1963. on September 25, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. His conclusion: Y-1 leaf was special because, “I think that we can say even now that we can unlike natural leaf, it had a lower proportion of regulate, fairly precisely, the nicotine and sugar tar to nicotine. The sticky tar compounds—the levels to almost any desired level management same ones that cause cancer—block nicotine might require.”—Dr RB GriYth, Brown & Wil- from entering the bloodstream, he explained. liamson oYcial, 18 September 1963. Without all the tars, Y-1’s extra nicotine was “Smoking is an addictive habit attributable absorbed faster. to the nicotine and the form of nicotine aVects “Increased nicotine delivery,” he wrote, the rate of absorption.”—BAT Research and occurred because the throat and lungs were Development Conference minutes, 24 October “less protected by the tar” from the nicotine. 1967. “Technically, Bevan may be correct,” said “We are in the business of selling nicotine so Boyse of Brown & Williamson. why not produce the first ‘TRUELY [sic] But the test cigarettes referred to in the SATISFYING LOW TAR CIGARETTE?’”—Brown & report, she said, were nothing like the ones that Williamson in-house slide presentation, 14 went to market. Those cigarettes, she said, August 1974. would have “tasted like a cigar.” “Taking a long-term view, there is a danger Bill Farone, a former Philip Morris research in the current trend of lower and lower director, reviewed the Bevan report at the cigarette (nicotine) deliveries—i.e. the smoker request of the AP and oVered a diVerent inter- will be weaned away from the habit.”—Dr SJ pretation. Green, BAT scientist, 29 March 1976. “BAT was figuring out how to increase the “There are other things about tobacco drug-rush sensation of nicotine without though. It is legal (as is alcohol but not Industry Watch 319 Tob Control: first published as 10.1136/tc.7.3.315 on 1 September 1998. Downloaded from

marijuana and LSD), and the articles or days. Thirdly, carelessly used, it sets fire to themselves are eminently portable. It can be things.”—CC Greig, BAT scientist, 1979. used freely in public places in most “If the FDA were to ever obtain jurisdiction over cigarettes countries....Howeverithasdrawbacks. The under the current regulatory framework, it would be virtually impossible to pass these FDA screens. As a result, FDA major one is that it has a ‘health shadow’ over jurisdiction could be tantamount to a marketing preclusion. We it which is not easy to dispel. Secondly, it is a obviously need to make sure that we don’t do anything in the nicotine delivery device area which could lead to the FDA messy habit, polluting the non-smoker’s asserting or obtaining jurisdiction over cigarettes.”—Mick breathable atmosphere, and leaving ash and McGraw, Brown & Williamson oYcial, 24 April 1992. debris, not to mention smells, around for hours http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/ on September 25, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright.

By Turan As¸an(Turkey).