BACKGROUND NOTE: This British American Tobacco Company document, Perhaps nicotine is the
least guilty, was written in 1978. It explains why the industry's
low-nicotine cigarettes are actually more harmful than higher-nicotine
cigarettes. As additional bonus, it describes the mechanisms through
which tobacco smoke causes cardiac disease. (Yet, in 1993, when Glantz
et al published a study revealing these same findings from experiments
with rabbits exposed to environmental tobacco smoke, the industry
immediately worked to discredit the findings.) This document also
contains admissions that nicotine is a drug, that carbon monoxide (CO)
is "a gas which is released from a cigarette and is very insidious," and
also states that "Tar, which is a composite of benzopyrene, nitrosamines
and other substances produced by cigarette combustion, is jointly
responsible for lung cancer. There is no longer any doubt about
this...."
This one contains a number of industry admissions that smoking causes
disease.
Quotes:
Most people consider that nicotine is the substance responsible for the
main disasters caused by smoking cigarettes. In fact, nicotine is an
active principle which can actually produce a favourable effect upon
one's organism, like any drug within a certain dosage. There are many
people who, thanks to nicotine from their cigarettes, succeed in
concentrating better and therefore working better. This is due to the
fact that nicotine releases certain hormones (serotonin, adrenaline and
noradrenaline) which stimulate the nervous system and accelerate the
circulation of the blood, increasing the flow of blood and therefore
oxygen to the brain.
There are many people who, because of nicotine, do not need laxatives,
because it also stimulates peristalsis, i.e. the spontaneous movements
of the stomach and of the intestine.
Nicotine actually causes a tranquilizing effect. Indeed it is the best
tranquilizer there is because, unlike the pills which reduce anxiety but
lower the capacity for concentration, nicotine acts positively upon
anxiety, reducing it, and upon mental concentration, increasing it. All
this is, of course, provided that the dosage is contained within certain
limits, i.e., a certain number of cigarettes. As with all drugs, there
is also a toxic level for nicotine above which nicotine can be harmful.
For years now, in the campaign waged against cigarettes, the spectre of
nicotine has been raised. The man in the street has linked all damage
deriving from cigarettes to nicotine. Faced with the threat of a
reduction in cigarette smoking throughout the world, what has the
industry which produces them done? Astutely, it has put out low
nicotine content cigarettes, which today seem to be the favourites with
the smokers, who thus feel that they can go on smoking and being
protected from the dangers contained in the smoke. But in fact, this is
not the case. Rather, a group of British researchers have recently
demonstrated that low nicotine content cigarettes are even more
harmful. Let us try and understand how this is.
1) Nicotine is only one of the two to three thousand substances which
are released in the combustion of a cigarette and which we put into our
organisms. Within certain limits it gives us those advantages to which
reference has been made. Above a certain dosage it gives rise to an
increase in fats in the blood and reduces the dimension of the arteries
so that anyone suffering from high blood pressure, from angina pectoris,
or who has (hyper colesterolemia) should not smoke. However, a
cigarette contains other much more harmful substances, which are not
much talked about. These are:
2) Carbon monoxide: a gas which is released from a cigarette and is
very insidious. In fact, we have said that nicotine increases the blood
flow, accelerating cardiac frequency, which rises from 60-80 heartbeats
a minute to 80-100. This would not be harmful; even when we walk
quickly our heart beats with a similar frequency. But when the heart
beats faster it needs more oxygen to work properly. However, carbon
monoxide extracts oxygen from the heart and it therefore has to work in
a precarious condition, with the risks you can imagine.
3) Examination of the blood of many heavy smokers reveals a higher
number of red globules than normal (polyglobuly). This happens because
the organism tries to defend itself from the chronic lack of oxygen,
producing a larger number of red globules (corpuscles) which as you will
know--take up the oxygen in the lungs and carry it to all the tissues.
But polyglobuly makes one liable to thrombosis [clotting].
Now, according to the British researchers, it has been discovered that
although it is true that a filter retains a certain amount of nicotine,
it increases by about [measurement illegible] the amount of carbon
monoxide absorbed by the smoker.
3) Tar, which is a composite of benzopyrene, nitrosamines and other
substances produced by cigarette combustion, is jointly responsible for
lung cancer. There is no longer any doubt about this....Tar reduces our
defences against cancer; in particular it paralyzes the bronchial
defensive systems, so that if the unknown cause of cancer attacks a
smoker, it finds his defences stripped.
4) Finally, there is never enough talk about other substances found in
cigarettes such as acreolin... ethane and formaldehyde which irritate
the bronchial tubes which are responsible for the most varying illnesses
related to cigarette smoking: i,e, the chronic bronchitis with all their
remote complications from pulmonary emphysema to cardio-respiratory
insufficiency. Many smokers avoid cancer and heart attacks but few
avoid the chronic bronchitic conditions which however shorten one's
life.
Having said all this, we should just try to stop smoking. Not so easy.
In the majority of cases it is a sickness or the first signs of a
disorder which induce the smoker the throw his cigarettes away. But
there are those who manage it, independently of this. In any case, do
not let yourself be led astray by low nicotine content cigarettes; it
has been seen indeed that those who go over to that type of cigarette
end up by smoking more of them, to the producer's great joy. In fact,
"nicotine hunger" is one of the causes impelling us to smoke.
...[W]ithin certain limits (not more than 10 a day) [smoking] causes no
more damage than many other aggressive chemicals which we breathe every
day in the air or which are masked in what we eat. But above certain
levels...it is like cutting off a bit of life from ourselves, day after
day.
...[A]nti-smoking campaigns are destined to fail because everyone has
different motivations for smoking. The illusion of the "safer smoke"
has instead made people more sensitive.
...But what is meant by a lighter or milder cigarette? Foreign
broadcasting stations and newspapers in the form of advertising indicate
some brands as being "less harmful" and speak of figures and
percentages, but some of the figures brought forward are incorrect. The
Monopoly made no bones about it, wanting the matter to be
clarified....When the Monopoly realized that some figures were
incorrect, they made some producers...remove the figures and replace
them with "low nicotine content"...
Anne Landman
American Lung Association of Colorado, West Region Office
Grand Junction
Title: Perhaps nicotine is the least guilty
Type of Document: Report
Author: N/A (British American tobacco Company)
Date: 19781030
Page Count: 3
Site: U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Tobacco Industry Document
site, Guildford documents
http://outside.cdc.gov:8080/BASIS/ncctld/web/guildford/sf
Bates No. 10042869/8871
URL:
http://outside.cdc.gov:8080/BASIS/ncctld/web/mnimages/DDW?W=DETAILSID=758
