The New Straits Times, May 2, 1997
Q: I was amazed to read that a tobacco company had confessed to the addictive nature of nicotine (NST, April 25). What are the other harmful chemicals found in cigarettes?
A: Since the recent landmark confession by the cigarette company, Ligget Group Inc, more sordid stories are beginning to be unravelled. The information coming from internal documents as part of the lawsuit settlement mentioned a variety of toxic substances found in cigarettes. Some documents contain a lengthy list of hazardous substances ranging from pesticides to fertilisers, additives to carcinogens.
A number of these substances are indeed very harmful and are banned in several countries.
Consequently, many anti-tobacco lawmakers are pressing tobacco companies to disclose all the ingredients in cigarettes with inserts in each pack as well as with cigars, pipes and smokeless tobacco so that smokers are fully informed of what they are subjecting themselves to.
Some also want bigger and starker warnings printed on a more mundane-looking packs. As a precedent, last year, Massachusetts became the first State in the United States to require tobacco companies to make known the additives in their product covering cigarettes, snuff and chewing tobacco, apart from the nicotine and tar levels.
More specifically, documents turned over by the company for the use of Florida in its lawsuit to recover public health care expenses for sick smokers show that the company also knew cigarettes contained residues of toxic pesticides. These include DDT, malathion and endrin, which the Ligget document labels "highly toxic".
Moreover, according to one source, while the US federal guidelines say that products for human consumption could contain only one part per million (ppm) of the insecticides, cigarettes tested showed levels of 55 times more in the tobacco, and 10 times in the smoke. Yet they still went on sale. It is important to note that substances like endrin and DDT are banned by many governments because of their injurious nature.
Indeed, the apparent obsession of tobacco companies with nicotine in cigarettes could be described as a paranoia of sorts.
Time and again, the industry has been accused of trying to manipulate the level of nicotine in cigarettes. A case in point is when one company developed (or rather, genetically manipulated) a tobacco plant during the `80s that contained double the amount of nicotine found in other strains. The plant, code-named Y-I, was grown in Brazil, presumbly to avoid easy detection.
This bizarre event was only disclosed in 1994 by the then FDA Commissioner Dr David Kessler. In other instances, the Ligget documents described how it is possible to increase the physiological effects of nicotine in cigarette, even if the level of nicotine is reduced to create the impression that the produce is less dangerous. All these are part of the all-important marketing gambit to capitalise on the on-time secret addictive ingredient, nicotine.
Notwithstanding these, there are also about 600 additives and more than 40 types of carcinogens in cigarettes. The incredibly long list of additives used in cigarettes have in fact also been admitted to by major tobacco makers as well.
That is not all. Tobacco companies, among others, are also known to have about 1,000 flavouring agents at their disposal. Given the potpourri of chemicals concentrated in a cigarette barely 15cm long with a diameter of less than 2.54cm, it is not surprising that at one point, Lingget was considering using synthetic ingredients to increase the impact of cigarettes on smokers, "without the severe toxicity itself".
Other makers are more creative in this respect, producing so-called "all natural cigarettes" such as Natural American Spirit. The maker promoted it as having none of the other 599 additives for the "purists and those who try to be one with the Earth" despite the well-known fact that its brand still contained deadly tar and nicotine. It therefore falsely claimed that it is only when all the chemicals are added to regular cigarettes that the ill-health effects are associated with smoking, conveniently dismissing the hazards of tar and nicotine. In any case, all these manoeuvres are indications of the strong guilt complex that sur-rounds the tobacco industry but unfortunately, not strong enough for them to reveal the true nature of the dangers implicit in their cigarettes until they are force to by laws.
In fact, there was a time when a "civil anti-trust investigation was carried out into whether tobacco companies secretly agreed to drop efforts to develop safer cigarettes".
Overall the number of substances associated with cigarettes could be in the range of thousands. This too many well be an underestimate considering the fact that the very tip of a lighted cigaretted is a glowing furnace of more than 1,000 degree Celsius. Under such extreme and severe temperatures, what are actually being produced when any one of these chemicals are being heated is anyone's guess. It is therefore no wonder that the Health Department of Western Australia mentioned that one could inhale up to "4,000 chemicals" from a cigarette, including several poisonous chemicals, graphically displayed in a poser.
Lastly, although all these point more directly to Ligget, a very small tobacco concern, the implications on the industry on the whole is equally serious.
In no way should the rest be allowed to go scot free and in no way should all these be glossed over. The average person will find it very hard to believe that if such a small company knew what hazardous substances are contained in a cigarette, none of the CEOs of the large companies could claim innocence over the matter, and perhaps many more, especially in a court of law.
To quote a Minnesota attorney-general, Hubert H. Humphrey II: "This is a little like busting a street drug dealer to get the Colombian drug cartel."
All the same before this could be done with any degree of success, we need to be united if we are serious in creating a tobacco-free world. Hence the theme of the 1997 World No-Tobacco Day: "United for a Tobacco-Free World".
