Tobacco Report Says Nicotine Levels Hiked Critics Say Firms Deliberately Increased Nicotine To Boost Sales

Tobacco critics say they have another smoking gun: a secret industry report alleging Philip Morris and Brown & Williamson boosted sales by deliberately enhancing their cigarettes’ nicotine levels.

The 23-year-old report from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was filed in a Minnesota lawsuit, one of eight in which states are trying to recover Medicaid costs spent treating sick smokers.

According to the documents, Reynolds scientists secretly concluded that two rivals were deliberately enhancing nicotine levels in cigarettes, and company researchers studied how Reynolds might do the same.

Philip Morris’ Marlboro and competitor Brown & Williamson’s Kool brand had much higher “free” nicotine levels than Reynolds’ brands, the scientists reported. They said “free” nicotine occurs with higher levels of alkaline in smoke, is rapidly absorbed and provides an instant “kick.”

Reynolds said Thursday that further research proved there was actually no link between product sales and levels of smoke alkaline and “free” nicotine.

“If they want to make that case, what they should do is release all of their research,” replied Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco, a leading anti-smoking researcher. “This is just the latest effort to bury the truth about what the tobacco companies know and when they knew it,” said Minnesota’s Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III.

All three companies have publicly denied manipulating nicotine content in their cigarettes. But officials from Philip Morris and Brown & Williamson did not respond to repeated calls for comment Thursday on the documents.

More than half the states are at least studying the possibility of suing tobacco companies to recover smoking-related health care costs. The Minnesota case is scheduled to go to trial in 1998.

“This is a very good example of the type of evidence that I think jurors will give a great deal of credence to,” Mark Gottlieb, an attorney with the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University in Boston, said Thursday.