More on the activities and opinions being weighed along the tobacco delivery approach. Given the vested interests that exist here (farming, mfging, marketing and distribution) I wouldn't bet against big tobacco in their efforts to maintin their market.
mad2
Copyright 2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Copyright 2000 Winston-Salem Journal
Winston-Salem Journal
October 3, 2000, Tuesday
KR-ACC-NO: WN-SAFE-CIG
LENGTH: 1287 words
HEADLINE: Virginia-Based Company Markets Less Toxic Cigarette
BYLINE: By Adrian Zawada
BODY:
Star Scientific Inc. began selling low-nitrosamine cigarettes in selected Kentucky and Virginia test markets yesterday to attract smokers who want a cigarette with less potential to cause cancer.
The cigarettes, called Advance, have 73 percent less tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs), which are acknowledged by public health advocates as among the most potent of 40 known carcinogens in cigarette smoke.
Advance cigarettes will also contain reduced levels of other toxins, like hydrogen cyanide, and their packaging will include detailed health warnings taking up the entire back of the cigarette packs.
"We have an obligation to make Advance available to adult tobacco consumers along with information about the comparable toxic constituents of smoke," said Paul Perito, the company's president and chairman. "Star hopes that the start of its limited test market of Advance will serve as an incentive to the traditional tobacco industry to consider producing and appropriately labeling potentially less toxic cigarette products in a similar fashion."
Star Scientific is the first tobacco company to sell low-nitrosamine cigarettes and the latest to market cigarettes that the public may perceive as a safer smoking alternative. Advance's two test markets are Richmond, Va., and Lexington, Ky.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. has invested more than $ 1 billion in developing its current smokeless cigarette Eclipse, and its failed predecessor, Premier.
RJR's Eclipse heats tobacco instead of burning it, and the company says it may present smokers with less risk of lung cancer, chronic brnchitis and emphysema.
The nation's No.2 tobacco company is selling Eclipse by the carton over the Internet and in four test markets, including Dallas-Fort Worth.
Star Scientific is taking a much different approach in marketing Advance compared to how RJR is marketing Eclipse.
The company is making no health claims, admitting on its Advance cigarette packs that "there is not enough evidence available to know if Star's methods will actually lower your health risks."
RJR announced two weeks ago that company scientists found no reduction in the toxicity of low-nitrosamine tobacco when exposing the smoke to animals and DNA cells.
Tobacco control advocates said RJR made the announcement out of concern for profit, not public health, with the goal of detracting public interest in low-nitrosamine products in order to retain its current competitive advantage in the minute, less-risky cigarette market.
Star Scientific will also avoid the standard cigarette advertising practices for Advance, although it will use a slogan, "Know what you smoke."
The Eclipse advertising campaign included standard marketing tools, including magazine ads.
Considering that Star Scientific can't say whether Advance cigarettes reduce smoking risks, "you're comparing apples and oranges" with regard to its potential competitiveness with RJR's Eclipse, said Seth Moskowitz, an RJR spokesman.
"Eclispe is the only cigarette available that has scientific substantiation to make the claim that it may present less risk," Moskowitz said, adding that Advance and Eclipse aren't even in the same category of cigarettes.
Cigarette companies shouldn't market the fact that they are using low-nitrosamine tobacco, said John Slade, a reduced-risk tobacco products expert and professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Slade and other public health advocates fear some smokers will inevitably perceive low-nitromine cigarettes as safer, even if they aren't, which may prevent smokers from quitting.
"I applaud them for the warnings they put on their packs, but I am concerned about the statements about nitrosamines because this is difficult information for consumers to understand," Slade said. "It may falsely raise expectations for some consumers."
Although Star Scientific and RJR said they have found no reduction in health risks, Brown & Williamson Corp. scientists said the low-nitrosamine tobacco performed better in a DNA-mutation test.
Brown & Williamson is manufacturing Advance cigarettes for Star Scientific, and has bought 12.5 million pounds of Star's low-nitrosamine tobacco.
Perito said Brown & Williamson is making the cigarettes and the packaging because the No. 3 cigarette company has better machinery.
In its public relations, Star Scientific is trying to distinguish itself from the other cigarette companies, which have been found liable in court cases for fraud, misrepresentation and making a dangerous and defective product.
The Chester, Va., company describes itself as a "technology-oriented tobacco company with a health-related mission." Slade said it is in fact a different tobacco company because it prints large warnings on cigarette packs.
Advance cigarette packs will have warning labels like "smoking can take years off your life. It's much safer for you to quit than to switch or smoke."
They will also contain a unique charcoal/acetate filter.
The company makes 21 million pounds of flue-cured, low-nitrosamine tobacco through its patented StarCure method in its Peterburg, Va., plant, and has produced 1.5 million pounds of low-nitrosamine burley tobacco this year as well.
Star Scientific's low-nitrosamine tobacco has no difference in color, taste or nicotine content from tobacco that hasn't undergone its patented StarCure process.
The tobacco also contains 30 percent less hydrogen cyanide than a typical light cigarette, and 15 percent less benzene. It has 47 percent more formaldehyde, and equal amounts of nicotine as a light cigarette.
Ultimately, Star Scientific's goal is to sell off its Advance cigarette brand after five years and focus on the tobacco technology processing business, Perito said.
"We assume that Advance will be licensed by other companies," Perito said. "We would love to see Brown & Williamson ultimately license and take over the product. They have superior ability to penetrate the market."
Reduced-risk cigarettes are like the frozen dinners of the 1950s, said David Adelman, a tobacco stocks analyst at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in New York.
"The 1950s frozen dinners were horrible, they were putrid," Adelman said. "But today, frozen dinners are accepted as high-quality, convenient, and people use them all the time. That's the context to think of this product."
It'll be a few decades before they're ever a significant part of the cigarette market and profitable, he said.
Low-nitrosamine tobacco is no breakthrough in making a safer cigarette, an impossible feat in itself, said Alan Blum, the Gerald Leon Wallace chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama.
Cigarette companies have been marketing less-risky cigarettes to the public ever since they introduced filtered cigarettes in 1931, he said.
Just like filtered cigarettes and light cigarettes did nothing to make smoking less damaging, neither will low-nitrosamine cigarettes, Blum said.
"Reducing nitrosamines doesn't have anything to do with the other dangers of smoking," Blum said. "No one knows whether they contribute to 20 percent of a victim's cancer or zero percent. It won't save lives."
Public health authorities insisted yesterday that the lack of scientific evidence further demonstrates the need for Food and Drug Administration jurisdiction over tobacco products.
"We need an objective, independent regulatory authority to be able to make scientific judgments," said Ken Warner, the director of the Tobacco Research Network at the University of Michigan. |
