Chapter 14, Part 2

By Frank Tursi, Susan E. White and Steve McQuilkin
JOURNAL REPORTERS
© Winston-Salem Journal

Reynolds researchers began to realize that there was more to Marlboro than a slick ad campaign. They had dissected Marlboros in the past, hoping to find clues to its success, but had turned up nothing unusual. As Marlboro's sales headed for the stratosphere in 1965, the researchers discovered what they thought was Marlboro's secret: ammonia. Philip Morris had apparently started adding minute amounts of diammonium phosphate to Marlboro's blend, and the RJR researchers speculated that it could account for the brand's meteoric rise in popularity.

Reynolds had experimented with ammonia in the 1950s but had never added any to cigarettes it sold. Ammonia, the RJR researchers knew, made cigarettes smoother tasting by reducing irritating acids in the tobacco. It also increased by as much as 400 percent the amount of a good-tasting chemical called pyrazine in the smoke. Large amounts of the compound also are found in peanut butter, chocolate and roast beef.

The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was once the largest cigarette company in the United States with a powerhouse of best-selling brands: Winston, Salem and Camel. But times changed, and as the case against smoking became more pronounced in the 1960s, RJR failed to adapt to the marketplace. Its rivals would eventually rush past it, and RJR's efforts to catch up would have a profound impact on the company and the cigarette industry.

Not only did ammonia take the bite out Marlboro, but researchers began to realize by the late 1960s that it also may have added wallop to its nicotine kick. Tobacco scientists knew by then, despite the current protestations of industry lawyers to the contrary, that people smoked because of nicotine.

The ritual of smoking a cigarette -- the sharp crinkling sound of cellophane, the tapping of a cigarette against a table, the flick of the lighter or the sulfurous flash of a match, the searing taste of the first drag -- offers immense gratification. But what keeps smokers coming back is the nicotine or, more precisely, its contradictory effects on the body's chemistry. Here is the perfect mild stimulant and sedative that reaches a smoker's brain in seconds but lasts no more than 30 minutes. It can get your heart racing or can calm your nerves. It can help put you to sleep or make you more alert. ''No one has ever become a cigarette smoker by smoking cigarettes without nicotine,'' William L. Dunn, a Duke University-trained psychologist who worked for Philip Morris, wrote in 1972.

That the cigarette is a way to deliver nicotine is an idea that is deeply rooted in the industry. Claude E. Teague Jr., RJR's assistant director of research, noted in 1972: ''In a sense, the tobacco industry may be thought of as being a specialized, highly ritualized and stylized segment of the pharmaceutical industry. Tobacco products, uniquely, contain and deliver nicotine, a potent drug with a variety of physiological effects. . . . Thus a tobacco product is, in essence, a vehicle for delivery of nicotine, designed to deliver nicotine in a generally acceptable and attractive form.''

That wasn't an assessment that tobacco executives voiced openly. Admitting that nicotine was a drug and a cigarette akin to a hypodermic needle would have attracted the attention of snooping regulators at the Food and Drug Administration. Dunn in 1969 warned Helmut Wakeman, Philip Morris' director of research and development, about talking publicly about nicotine's pharmaceutical effects. ''Do we really want to tout cigarette smoke as a drug?'' Dunn wrote in a memo to Wakeman. ''It is, of course, but there are dangerous FDA implications to having such (a) conceptualization go beyond these walls.''

From the earliest days of the tobacco industry, cigarette makers controlled the levels of nicotine in their products by carefully blending different kinds of tobacco. Flue-cured, burley and Turkish tobaccos each contain varying levels of nicotine depending on the leaf's location on the plant, the type of soil in which the plant grew and the amount of rainfall during the growing season. Tobacco additives, the porosity of the cigarette paper and the efficiency of the filter also affect the amount of nicotine that smokers inhale.

How quickly that nicotine moves from the smoke to the user's bloodstream helps determine the ''kick'' perceived by the smoker. Depending on the acidity of the smoke as measured by its pH, nicotine exists as either a salt, called ''bound,'' or in a neutral form, called ''freebase.'' The more alkaline the smoke, or the higher its pH, the more freebase nicotine, which enters the bloodstream much easier and quicker than do the salt forms.

''In essence, a cigarette is a system for delivery of nicotine to the smoker in attractive, useful form,'' Teague wrote in a 1973 RJR report. ''At `normal' smoke pH, at or below 6.0, essentially all of the smoke nicotine is chemically combined with acidic substances, hence is non-volatile . . . and relatively slowly absorbed by the smoker. As the smoke pH increases above about 6.0, an increasing proportion of total smoke nicotine occurs in `free' form, which is volatile, rapidly absorbed by the smoker, and believed to be instantly perceived as nicotine `kick.' ''

It was recognized throughout the industry by then that pH could be altered to change the speed at which nicotine entered the bloodstream. Frank Colby, the head of RJR's library, explained in a memo to one company scientist in 1973, ''Still, with an old-style filter, any desired additional nicotine `kick' could be easily obtained through pH regulation.''

Ammonia did the job nicely. Combined with a blend that contained more burley tobacco and stems and less sugar, it made Marlboro a smoother smoke than Winston, and it also slightly raised the pH of the smoke, giving Marlboro a mightier smoke.

''After Winston, Marlboro was the best designed cigarette in the world,'' conceded Alan Rodgman, a retired RJR scientist who directed the company's experiments on the composition of cigarette smoke.

He and other tobacco scientists now insist that pH does nothing to alter the amount of freebase nicotine that smokers inhale. RJR research in the 1980s, Rodgman said, proved that saliva, which has a neutral pH of 7.0, buffers the smoke before it enters the lungs. ''That's the controlling factor, not what's bouncing up against it,'' Rodgman said.

Kids and Cowboys

Managers in the Reynolds Research & Development Department gave the highest priority in 1973 to producing a cigarette that tasted and smoked just like Marlboro. Researchers tested various ammonia compounds to raise smoke pH, experimented with different tobacco blends and filters.

Reynolds started adding ammonia to Camels in 1974 and to Winstons five years later. By then RJR had closed the nicotine gap; its researchers knew as much about smoke pH as their counterparts at Philip Morris, and Winstons were, by then, Marlboro's kissing cousin. ''We duplicated it exactly and put it on the market, but people still smoked Marlboro,'' said Murray Senkus, RJR's director of scientific affairs at the time. ''Again, it's the image.''

By the end of 1975, Marlboro overtook Winston as the top-selling cigarette brand in America.

Maybe more distressing to RJR executives, because it hinted that the coup could be permanent, was that the Marlboro Man was lassoing the next generation of smokers. Surveys done for Philip Morris in 1969 found that 15 percent of female smokers and 23 percent of male smokers age 15 smoked Marlboro. No other brand came close.

Charles A. Tucker, RJR's director of marketing, told the RJR Industries board at its meeting on Hilton Head, S.C., in September 1974 that 14 percent of smokers ages 14-24 favored Winston, but a third smoked Marlboro. ''This suggests slow market erosion for us in the years to come unless the situation is corrected,'' Tucker told the directors.

Reynolds, like all tobacco companies, had for years tracked the smoking habits of children as young as 14. Back in the 1950s and '60s when everyone smoked, including many 14-year-olds, no one would have been overly critical of the companies for doing that. By the 1970s, as the health effects of smoking became clearer, targeting kids became dicier. To show that they cared and to mollify a Congress contemplating stringent warnings on cigarette ads, the companies in late 1969 adopted a voluntary advertising code that supposedly prevented them from advertising in magazines or on television programs aimed primarily at children. Before the code, RJR had Fred Flintstone endorsing Winston in commercials.

Reynolds' interest in young smokers took on a sense of urgency as Marlboro became the favored cigarette of America's kids. Teague, in an August 1973 memo titled ''Some Thoughts About New Brands of Cigarettes for the Youth Market,'' argued that RJR was being ''unfairly'' constrained from promoting cigarettes to the ''youth market,''which he defined as being 21 and under. That age group, he wrote, was smoking in greater numbers. ''If this is so, there is certainly nothing immoral or unethical about our Company attempting to attract those smokers to our products,'' Teague wrote.

The company shouldn't entice young people to smoke, he advised, but should recognize that some youngsters will do so anyway. RJR, Teague wrote, should offer a brand designed especially for the ''pre-smoker'' and ''learner'' -- one that was low in tar and nicotine and more flavorful than brands then on the market.

''If our company is to survive and prosper, over the long term we must get our share of the youth market,'' Teague warned.

Colby endorsed the idea four months later in a memo to RJR's director of marketing planning. ''It is apparently established beyond a doubt that Philip Morris' Marlboro cigarette has a much stronger hold on the up and coming new generation of smokers than Winston or our other brands,'' he wrote. ''It seems to me that a `me too' brand stands very little chance of changing this situation. What is needed is a new concept.''

Teague reiterated the idea in the draft of a 10-year plan for RJR that he helped write in 1976. ''Young people will continue to become smokers at or above the present rates during the projection period,'' he wrote. ''The brands which these beginning smokers accept and use will become dominant brands in future years. Evidence is now available to indicate that the 14 to 18 year-old group is an increasing segment of the smoking population. RJR (next 2 words underlined) must soon establish a successful new brand in this market if our position in the industry is to be maintained over the long term.''

Rodgman, who had succeeded Senkus as director of research by then, deleted the paragraph from the final planning document. ''When I looked in there, I said `I don't believe that nonsense,' and I took it out,'' Rodgman said.

Current and former Reynolds executives and lawyers maintained that the company's advertising campaigns were never knowingly aimed at minors. Even the surveys of 14-year-olds that the company did in the 1950s and '60s were used to determine what brands the kids would smoke when they were adults, said Bill Smith, the former RJR president and chairman. ''Projecting what they would be doing five years from now,'' Smith said. ''You've got to do that in any kind of business.''

Henry Ramm, RJR's general counsel until his retirement in 1970, nixed any ads he thought might appeal to minors, said John Dowdle, a former treasurer of Reynolds Industries.

Advertising to kids was against the company's culture, Dowdle said. He doesn't doubt, though, that some middle-level brand managers wanted to attract minors.

''You always got the marketing-type people in there, the brand manager who is trying to make a name for himself and being promoted to a product manager,'' he said. ''And they're quoting these memos stating what their opinion is. And I imagine you've got a lot of those things. `Gosh, if we could only get the 12-year-olds hooked we'd pass Philip Morris going away.' But I mean as far as that being adopted at any level, to actually reflect company policy or company desire or anything, not to my knowledge.''

That's the point Paul Crist has tried to make in countless courtrooms. Reynolds is a big company that has employed many thousands of people over the years, said Crist, a senior partner with Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue. The Cleveland law firm supplies RJR with its main trial lawyers. The company certainly can't control everything its employees write in memos and reports and insert in company files, Crist said. Writing is one thing, he noted. Doing is something else. ''Yeah, there are going to be documents like that in any company. But I frankly believe that the people I know here that have been in the marketing department . . . these people are class acts,'' he said.

Teague's report, for instance, resulted from the musings of a man who liked to think big thoughts, Rodgman said. ''Claude was a philosophizer. He liked to sit and think of things,'' he said. ''But it doesn't mean you did it just because you talked about it.''

The documentary evidence seems to suggest that this talk about attracting young smokers intensified in the early 1970s as Reynolds executives realized the success Marlboro was having among minors. Charles Blixt, RJR's general counsel, cautioned about trying to get into the heads of people 25 or more years ago.

''I think the key thing is the documents that you've talked about are it. It's a handful of documents that make these references that nobody knows what the hell the person who was writing was thinking about,'' Blixt said. ''Nobody knows why they put it down. I mean Claude Teague has been deposed on his document. It's a draft think-piece that he stuck in his file and nobody apparently ever saw. . . . And then you get a few of these other isolated documents and they're just pieces of paper from 30 years ago that are isolated in number and isolated in what they were talking about. And as far as we've been able to determine, it just was never acted on, never been any program in this company that we've ever been able to find that was intended to or directed at in any way trying to get people underage to smoke our brands. It just didn't happen.''

Teague declined to be interviewed for these stories, but Colby hinted that sometimes ethics took a back seat to profits. ''While I do believe what I do believe, it's not a rigid unequivocal truth, and children have no judgment. So you have to postpone making it attractive until they have enough IQ to make their own judgment,'' Colby said.

''So I am against marketing cigarettes to children, but a competitive situation may force you to.''