Philip Morris didn't deliberately boost nicotine
The recent Harvard University report that concluded Philip Morris USA and other tobacco companies have deliberately increased the amount of nicotine that smokers get from cigarettes over the past seven years, if true, raises legitimate public and scientific concerns. ("Help is smoke screen for global profit," by Allan M. Brandt, March 1).
News of this report has increased the volume of those voices that favor regulation of cigarettes by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Philip Morris USA continues to support the legislation introduced in 2005 to grant the FDA authority over the product, including the regulation of tar and nicotine. Such authority would directly address the concerns raised in the Harvard report. It's a comprehensive bill, and Philip Morris USA is the only major cigarette manufacturer that supports it.
Cigarettes are addictive and cause serious diseases. The nicotine in cigarette smoke is addictive and an important health issue. But the conclusion from the report, that there was a trend of more and more nicotine in cigarettes between 1997 and 2005, and that the cigarettes were designed to yield greater amounts year after year, is not true for Philip Morris USA. We recognize that is a strong statement. And we understand it is important for us to demonstrate why and in what ways this conclusion is not accurate.
Contrary to the implications of the report, we have not changed the design of our cigarettes with the intention of increasing nicotine yields to make the product more addictive. The Harvard report itself also found no upward trends in Marlboro cigarettes for measures that the authors concluded were related to cigarette design and increased nicotine yield, including puffs per cigarette, nicotine content per cigarette or nicotine concentration in the tobacco rod.
In fact, the machine test data we submitted to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health show that year-to-year variations in nicotine occur. They are part of the normal processes of growing tobacco and manufacturing cigarettes. But the nicotine yields in Marlboro cigarettes were the same in 1997 as in 2006: 1.86 milligrams per cigarette. That's not a trend up or down.
We understand that many are skeptical of what we say and do, but our actions and the data are transparent. JOHN R. NELSON
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