Liggett & Meyers: Smoking -- Pleasurable, Poisonous, Carcinogenic (1961)

  March 15, 1961

 

Summary of Image
Page One
"L&M - A Perspective Review
1. There are biologically active materials present in cigarette smoke. These are:"
a) cancer causing, b) cancer promoting, c) poisonous, d) stimulating, pleasurable, and flavorable... The cancer-causing materials apparently are in many substances that are pyrolyzed but seem to be associated with tobacco in greater concentrations than for primarily cellulose."
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Summary of Image
Page Two
"9. What the 'causative precursors in tobacco are is not well known... So there is the suggestion of two mechanisms for causative agent products... but what good is this? We've known this for several years -- so what? ...10. The non-tobacco exploration has indicated that the specific activity can be less -- but no one wants a hemp cigarette"
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Summary of Image
Page Three
"25. Isn't the above the most optimistic view of the possibilities for this product since 1954?"
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BACKGROUND NOTE: This confidential, "limited" Liggett & Meyers Tobacco Company document is a very straightforward confirmation that by 1961 the tobacco industry knew that...

"1. There are biologically active materials present in cigarette tobacco. These are: a) cancer causing
b) cancer promoting
c) poisonous
d) stimulating, pleasurable, and flavorful."

What's more, this industry consultant who wrote this paper used the terms "causative precursors in tobacco" and "causative agent products" several times in referring to the cancer-causing and promoting chemicals in their products. Publicly, though, at this same time the industry was creating doubt and "controversy" about the causation relationship between tobacco use and illness...

Even despite this very clear and early acknowledgment of the health effects of their products, tobacco companies still oppose cancer victims in court, and try to create doubt that tobacco products could have contributed to the victims' cancers.

Documents like this are helping jurors in such cases to see the truth and are turning juries against the industry in courtrooms around the country.

BTW, the author of this paper, Arthur D. Little (of Arthur D. Little, Inc.) was an outside consultant to the Liggett & Meyers Tobacco Co. He conducted animal experiments from 1954-1984.

Quotes:
L&M - A Perspective Review

1. There are biologically active materials present in cigarette tobacco.

These are:
a) cancer causing
b) cancer promoting
c) poisonous
d) stimulating, pleasurable, and flavorful.

3. The cancer-causing materials, esters, phenols, amines, can possibly be reduced by some treatment, extraction, etc.

4. The cancer-causing materials apparently are in many substances that are pyrolized but seem associated with tobacco in greater concentration than for primarily cellulose....

...There are many forces which continue to emphasize that L & M is in the tobacco business, not the pleasure business. Any shift from being in the tobacco business will have to be accomplished by avoiding these major pressures. A means is emerging. Is it correct? Can it be accelerated?

...Perhaps one of the reasons that an emphasis on the little poisonous molecules was avoided was that filtering them out seemed a major threat to the other gas phase materials that are added as flavoring agents...

...So there is the suggestion of two mechanisms for causative agent products:

1) low temperature formation
2) high temperature polymerization,

but what good is this? We've known it for several years--so what?

10. The non-tobacco exploration has indicated that the specific activity can be less -- but no one wants a hemp cigarette.

Title: L&M - A Perspective Review
Type of Document: Confidential, limited report
Author: Little, Arthur D.
Date: 19610315
Site: Philip Morris document site
Page Count: 3
Bates No. 2021382496/2498 (also 2021382482/2509)
Litigation usage: Minnesota selected, Minnesota trial exhibit
URL: http://www.pmdocs.com/getallimg.asp?DOCID=2021382496/2498

source: Anne Landman, Regional Program Coordinator
American Lung Association of Colorado, West Region Office

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