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
