Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education

After the U.S. Surgeon General concluded in 1964 that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, tobacco companies recognized that health issues concerned millions of Americans smokers. The companies responded by introducing “light,” “filtered,” “low tar,” and “ultra low tar” brands and marketing them as less dangerous than regular cigarettes. Millions switched brands but experienced no health benefits as a result. The “light” and “low tar” experiment was a public health disaster. Today, the U.S. tobacco industry is marketing a new generation of “reduced risk” tobacco products. These include “low nitrosamine” cigarettes, “heated” nicotine delivery devices, and smokeless tobacco. Companies are claiming they are “safer,” have “less toxins,” and deliver “reduced carcinogens.” An essential question regarding these products is whether history is repeating itself.

At the request of Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Janice D. Schakowsky, this report compares the history of “light” and “low tar” cigarettes to available evidence about the new “reduced risk” tobacco products, including previously undisclosed internal company documents. The report finds striking parallels between current “reduced risk” products and past experience with “light” and “low tar” cigarettes.

Marketing to Counter Health Fears

Starting in the late 1960s, tobacco companies sold “light” and “low tar” brands as important scientific advances that addressed the growing anxiety smokers felt about their health. The companies’ claims could be explicit, as when Brown & Williamson marketed Fact, “the low gas, low ‘tar’” cigarette that should appeal to “critics of smoking.” More frequently, cigarette manufacturers exploited the widespread belief that since nicotine and tar were harmful, cigarettes offering less of these toxins had to be safer. As a result, when Philip Morris relied on machine-based testing of nicotine and tar to declare “Merit Science Works” or Brown & Williamson stated “Latest U.S. Gov’t Laboratory test confirms . . . Carlton is lowest,” smokers heard a clear message about health. The tobacco industry also sought to enlist health officials in their campaign to promote these products, with one company hoping “to generate statements by public health opinion leaders which will indicate tolerance for smoking and improve the consumer’s perception of ultra low ‘tar’ cigarettes.”

The tobacco industry is making strikingly similar claims for its “reduced risk” products today. For example, Brown & Williamson markets its Advance Lights brand as a “revolutionary breakthrough in cigarette technology” that provides “All of the taste . . . less of the toxins.” Vector Tobacco has promoted Omni as offering: “Reduced carcinogens. Premium taste.” In marketing Eclipse, R.J. Reynolds proclaims that “the toxicity of [Eclipse’s] smoke is dramatically reduced compared to other cigarettes.”

According to internal company documents, Brown & Williamson’s parent company has developed a public relations campaign for “lower risk products” based on partnerships with the public health community.

Deceiving Consumers

Even as their advertisements promoted “light” and “low tar” cigarettes as better for health, tobacco companies knew that smokers generally received the same amount of nicotine and other toxins from these products as from their regular cigarettes. In fact, the companies designed cigarettes to score low on machine-based testing but still allow users to inhale their usual amounts of nicotine and tar. To accomplish this, manufacturers took such steps as adding ventilation holes that drew in diluting air on machine testing but were blocked by smokers during actual use. An Illinois judge recently called one company’s actions in creating these brands “immoral, unethical, oppressive and unscrupulous.”

While new “reduced risk” products are still in their infancy, there are warning signs that tobacco companies may again be deceiving consumers. In 2000, in an internal company email, a senior scientist at Brown & Williamson’s corporate parent flatly dismissed the advertised advantages of the company’s special “low nitrosamine” tobacco.

He wrote to other company officials that the technology to make cigarettes “appreciably less lethal . . . does not exist.” He added: “We should tone down future expectations. Firstly, it is not ethical and secondly we shall be asked to explain our failures at some point in the future.”

On its website today, R.J. Reynolds claims to have evaluated its “reduced risk” product Eclipse using a rigorous four-step verification process. However, the Department of Justice recently determined that “all R.J. Reynolds did was look at all of the work it already had done to evaluate Eclipse to date, categorize it, and retroactively dub it a ‘four step methodology.’” The head of the supposedly “independent” scientific effort reviewing Eclipse has received more than $1.5 million from R.J. Reynolds.

Marketing to Deter (or Reverse) Quitting

Tobacco companies marketed “light” and “low tar” brands to the health-conscious smoker as viable alternatives to quitting. For example, Lorillard’s brand True was advertised with the slogan, “Considering all I’d heard, I decided to either quit or smoke True. I smoke True.”

There are signals that similarly irresponsible marketing is occurring today. In 1998, Philip Morris introduced Accord as a tobacco product with less secondhand smoke.

In January 2003, the Department of Justice determined that “to the extent that Philip Morris has sought to market Accord . . . there is evidence showing that it had its advertising agency assist in marketing Accord to those who want to quit or who have quit and are rejoining the cigarette market.”

In 2000, the President of the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company wrote that a key company objective was “Promoting Dual Consumption” of smokeless tobacco among smokers frustrated by indoor air laws. Starting in 2001, the company began to market a new product, Revel, with the slogan “a fresh new way to enjoy tobacco when you can’t smoke.” This marketing strategy, if successful, could sustain nicotine addiction and make it harder for smokers to quit.

Exploiting the Absence of Effective Regulation

Health officials did not recognize the dangers posed by “light” and “low tar” cigarettes before it was too late. Without full access to information, some government officials even believed that substantial disease reductions were likely among “light” and “low tar” smokers. For decades, cigarette manufacturers advertised the numbers from the Federal Trade Commission’s flawed machine-based testing method while simultaneously fighting effective tobacco regulation.

Today, tobacco companies are making a blizzard of health claims about new “reduced risk” products without any significant government oversight. No agency has the authority to assess the claims made by the companies before they are made, routinely review company research and documents, or set standards for what might justifiably pose a reduced risk to consumers. As a result, the unregulated promotion of “reduced risk” products threatens to undermine smoking cessation (which is proven to save lives), cause former smokers to resume their addiction, and even attract young people to tobacco products.