Chris Burford:
Tobacco industry knowingly duped public with "low tar" brands
Caroline White London
US tobacco companies deliberately marketed low tar and "light" cigarettes as healthy alternatives to regular brands in the knowledge that they were just as dangerous, an analysis of internal industry documents has shown.
Research published in a supplement to Tobacco Control (2002;11(suppl 1):i18-31) on the disclosures in corporate documents shows that the industry devised "low tar" brands to reassure smokers about mounting evidence linking smoking to lung cancer and to persuade them to switch rather than give up the habit.
In 1976 Philip Morris spent $45m (£32m; €51m) promoting its "low tar" Merit brand and almost double that 10 years later when the Ultra Light version came on the market.
When in 1981 Brown & Williamson introduced the Barclay brand as 99% tar free, because of its low tar yield in government machine tests, competitors petitioned the Federal Trade Commission, revealing that they knew the test procedure was flawed and that it didn’t reflect the way people smoked.
"This generation of products, or the next, could easily ... deliver no tar or nicotine when smoked by the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] method, and yet when smoked by humans essentially be unfiltered cigarettes," read an industry document. It continued: "Such products could be advertised as ‘tar-free,’ ‘zero milligrams FTC tar,’ or ‘the ultimate low tar cigarette’ while actually delivering 20, 30, 40 mg, or more ‘tar’ when used by a human smoker."
Advertising campaigns included the commission’s yield figures for tar and nicotine, to add credibility. And these figures were used by some companies to heavily promote a low tar box brand that was very similar to the high tar soft pack of the same name. Companies then deliberately produced very small quantities of the low tar pack, a ploy known as "phantom branding."
Market research showed that low tar brands were perceived as the healthiest option: "When asked why the brands they named were better for your health, answers overwhelmingly were concerned with lower tar content."
A British American Tobacco document declares that its entire marketing policy emphasises reassurance of consumers about cigarettes and smoking "by claimed low deliveries, by the perception of low deliveries, and by the perception of mildness."
"The use of descriptors like ‘lights’ is perhaps the most disgraceful consumer confidence trick of all time," comments Clive Bates, director of Action on Smoking and Health, "and a cynical attempt to reassure smokers with its promise of reduced risk."
"It has been a very sorry saga of deceit by the industry," says Professor Martin Jarvis, principal scientist at Cancer Research UK and professor of health psychology at University College London. "But it’s taken the government and the public health community a very long time to catch up."
The tobacco industry is currently challenging a European Union directive proposed last year, part of which will prohibit the use of descriptors such as "light" and "low tar" on cigarette packs.