Washington, June 25 (Bloomberg) -- Don't be fooled by the proposed tobacco agreement. The real reason the tobacco companies want to settle is not to make amends for the harm they've done, but to clear the way to continue to sell cigarettes to future generations of Americans.
Sure, the industry is on the defensive. Sure, the expanding market for cigarettes may be abroad. Nonetheless, Big Tobacco's main motive in seeking a settlement, says Sam Sears, chief executive officer of Star Tobacco & Pharmaceuticals in Petersburg, Virginia, is so they can ``prolong their ability to sell cigarettes here.''
The cigarette of the future will be altered and marketed, directly or indirectly, as safer. When, and if, a settlement is reached, Sears predicts the tobacco companies, currently constrained from making health claims of any sort, will turn their technology loose ``to make a safer product, and they know more about tobacco science than anyone else in the world.''
Sears should know what he's talking about. He hopes to get into the safer cigarette business himself. Within weeks, he plans to ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve a new tobacco process developed by his company to eliminate nitrosamines, the major carcinogen in cigarettes.
The Star Tobacco executive won't talk about his process, his company or his financial backers, except to say the company is privately held. Still, the fact that Sears, an attorney by training, left his home town of Boston to come to Petersburg is evidence he believes in safe cigarette technology.
Public health advocates are aghast. Safe cigarettes? ``An oxymoron, absurd,'' says Paul Billings, of the American Lung Association. ``All that says is the product won't kill you as fast.''
Still, there's no denying the tobacco companies are searching for a new product -- with little success so far. Philip Morris, whose Marlboro brand dominates the global cigarette market, failed in two attempts to market no-nicotine cigarettes, Next and Merit Free.
Now RJR Nabisco, Inc., the second largest tobacco company, is test marketing a new brand, Eclipse, that ``smokes'' by heating, rather than burning, tobacco through a carbon tip that is lighted. An earlier try, Premier, failed to win over enough smokers to be continued.
Eclipse holds more promise, says Nat Walker, a company spokesman. Though the continuing test in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has managed to attract only a small group of smokers, Walker says results show ``the taste is better than Premier.''
RJR is in the process of modifying Eclipse. ``If we get it right,'' says Walker, ``we'll expand the test marketing.''
Such experiments are among the reasons public health groups insist that the FDA be given complete authority over the nicotine content of tobacco before last week's landmark settlement between the tobacco industry and 40 state attorneys general is approved by President Bill Clinton and the Congress.
A draft report today released by a White House advisory panel co-chaired by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and former FDA Commissioner David Kessler declared the settlement, in which the industry agreed to pay $368.5 billion over 25 years to help pay for tobacco's harm, as fatally flawed because it fails to uphold FDA's authority.
The FDA should have ``immediate and explicit authority to regulate all areas of nicotine (without) limitations on or special exceptions to FDA authority,'' the report said.
On paper, last week's agreement does acknowledge FDA's right to regulate nicotine levels in cigarettes but, in doing so, it set forth new obstacles to agency action. One would require FDA to prove that reducing nicotine in American cigarettes wouldn't create ``significant demand for contraband.'' FDA officials say they have no idea how they would do that.
Because of those terms, Kessler and other public health advocates claim the agreement actually weakens FDA's authority over nicotine. ``There are a number of components of this agreement that are of concern to us, but perhaps none are as great as this,'' said John Seffrin, president of the American Cancer Society.
Support from the public health community is essential to ratification of the settlement by the president and Congress. Clinton gave FDA authority to regulate nicotine as a drug last year, a power that was affirmed by a federal judge in North Carolina in April.
Armed with that ruling, public health advocates see no reason to compromise, leaving the next move to the tobacco industry. Yet, there is building pressure to work out a deal. Big Tobacco has come a long way in admitting its liability. The president, and individual congressmen facing reelection next year, could suffer politically if it appears that the government is being excessive in its demands.
``It's a very tricky situation,'' says Michael Light, tobacco analyst for the G-7 Group, an international consulting firm. ``The White House doesn't want to appear to be soft on tobacco, but also doesn't want to appear to be discarding the agreement out of hand.''
Resolving the issue of FDA authority over nicotine will
determine the outcome, a prospect that will require both the
industry and the public health community to give ground. ``Our goal
is a smoke-free society,'' says Rich Hamburg for the American Heart
Association, ``but being realists we know tobacco will continue to
be sold in this country and abroad.'' As ``safe'' cigarettes?