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Q: THE BROWN & WILLIAMSON DOCUMENTS, IF YOU COME TO IT WITHOUT KNOWING ANYTHING, WHAT DO THEY REVEAL TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC THAT THEY DIDN'T BEFORE?
Glantz: The Brown & Williamson documents show that by the early 60's they recognized nicotine as an addictive drug, that cigarettes were devices to deliver nicotine to the brain very efficiently in metered doses, and that smoking caused cancer. Later they recognized that smoking caused heart disease and other diseases, and that this information was withheld from the public and that complicated legal and public relations subterfuges were developed to keep this information away from the proper authorities and to keep the public smoking. At the same time that they had huge experiments under way internally to try to find out what it was in the cigarettes that were causing cancer so they could try to do something about it, they were denying that smoking caused any disease whatsoever to the public.
Q: HOW IMPORTANT IS JEFF WIGAND?
Glantz: The emergence of Jeff Wigand, I think is probably the most important development that's happened in tobacco probably in the last 30 years. Because, when I got the Brown & Williamson documents and read them it confirmed what we thought. And it showed that over a period of many years, the industry knew smoking caused disease, knew nicotine was addictive, but the documents end in 1985, about. And Brown & Williamson has been saying, as the tobacco companies always say, well they're not representative or it's cherry picking or, misrepresentation of this, that or the other thing. But Wigand can come speak in the first person. He was there, he dealt with these people, he was the object of the kind of league lawyer manipulation of the scientific process that the documents show. And his ability to get up there and say, I know this because it was said to me, I know this because it was told to me, I know this because I did it is something that the industry is simply not going to be able to do anything about. I fear for the guy , he's been given death threats and I think the industry is running a psychological warfare campaign against him, trying to drive him into a mental hospital. But if he lives through this, he's gonna save millions of lives, I think. I mean, I think the guy is a hero.
Brown & Williamson says that the often-quoted statement by Addison Yeaman that we're in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug, is just one kind of out-of- context, weird statement. Well, if you look at the documents here, you'll see that there's hundreds of documents in here dealing with nicotine and very sophisticated issues of nicotine pharmacology: the effects of nicotine on the central nervous system, how do you control the delivery of nicotine to the brain. I mean what they're doing is typical of the industry, whenever any document leaks out that shows they knew smoking was addictive or that it caused disease, or that advertising research showing they're trying to appeal to kids, the answer's always the same, it's that, well, that was a rogue scientist or a rogue advertising consultant or a rogue executive or a rogue lawyer and that isn't really what we mean. Well, the strange thing and the bizarre thing about this is that if you look at the research they did on nicotine it was superb science, it was 20 years ahead of what's going on in places like UCSF and you'd think they'd be proud of it, but instead they repudiate it and they say this was somehow all screwed up. Well if that was the case, and given that their scientific work fit with what the larger community learned later, I'd like them to produce all the research they did that showed nicotine wasn't addictive and not their phoney baloney special projects and CTR stuff, but y'know Brown & Williamson has said that somehow these documents are cherry-picked or not representative. Well, when I look at them they tell a story, they all fit together, they make scientific sense. If this is somehow not representative they've got the keys to the vault, let them release all of their scientific research. And we'll see how typical or atypical this was, my guess is this is very highly reflective of what they did, and had I been one of their scientists at the time I'd have been proud to have done this work.
Q: CAN YOU COME UP ONE DOCUMENT IN WHICH THEY CATEGORICALLY STATE THAT NICOTINE IS ADDICTIVE?
Glantz: Right here, we have document 1102.01, it's the minutes of a research conference that was held, and we have Sir Charles Ellis who was the chief scientist of British American Tobacco saying smoking is a habit of addiction.
I mean if you read Ellis's work, if you read the work of most of their scientists, they're very straightforward. The other thing you have to appreciate is that in the 60's when all this was done, this was before the war on drugs. And the whole addiction didn't have the kind of social stigma it does today and in fact one of the big concerns that the tobacco industry had back then was new drugs were appearing on the scene like resurping and the anti depressants and new psycho active drugs and they were afraid those were gonna compete with cigarettes. That motivated a lot of the research, in fact.
Q: BUT WHAT ABOUT YEAMAN'S MEMO. I MEAN , CAN YOU REASONABLY ARGUE THAT THIS WAS NOT THE OPINION OF THE COMPANY BUT JUST THE OPINION OF SOMEONE PREPARING A BRIEF FOR THE SURGEON GENERAL?
Glantz: No. I mean why, for one thing, if they're preparing a brief for the surgeon general, didn't they send the surgeon general, y'know they withheld the information on nicotine research from the surgeon general. So I mean the argument -- it's stupid. I mean how could they say they were preparing some kind of brief for the surgeon general, that they never gave the surgeon general. The whole debate, in fact, was over withholding the information from the surgeon general, which they did.
The other thing is, when you read the Yeaman memo, it's consistent with the whole rest of this material. Another thing that's very important about these documents is there's a lot of them. And y'know they fit together, they tell a story. And when we went through them, the Yeaman memo was one document out of many, many, many documents and it had a role and it said some important things but it didn't say anything that was inconsistent with the whole rest of the documentary record and in fact it was quite consistent with it. So I mean for them to somehow say that this was some out of control person writing some strange view, it repudiates the whole rest of the scientific record that they had built.
Q: THAT'S WHAT THEY DO SAY ABOUT THE YEAMAN MEMO, ISN'T IT? THEY SAID THAT IT WAS A BREAK, WASN'T THE COMPANY POSITION.
Glantz: Well I mean I don't know, you'd have to ask them but I mean they, that's the kind of thing. I mean years ago when the federal trade commission got a hold of research on how to get --one of the companies had, in fact, I think it was Brown & Williamson-- and how to attract young smokers, Brown & Williamson's response was, well that was some out of control marketing research guy and it wasn't the company position. When Victor DeNoble talked about his work on nicotine analogs for Philip Morris and how that research was shut down they said well that was just one guy, he wasn't doing, that wasn't what we really meant. I mean that's always their answer and y'know just because these guys can wear expensive suits and hire big public relations firms with fancy dancy lawyers, that doesn't make ridiculous statements not ridiculous. And the things that they're saying are simply stupid.
And, y'know one of the things they do through all of their fancy public relations experts, lawyers and the fact that everybody's afraid of them, is they can say stupid things and get treated respectfully rather than somebody simply saying this is stupid. I mean for them to get up there, to have the temerity to go before Henry Waxman and say nicotine is not addictive, I mean that was a defining moment in the history of this issue. That's why it was, it was such a great idea for the California department of health services to make the nicotine soundbite spot and that's why Governor Wilson caved in to Philip Morris's friends and Philip Morris pulled the ad.
Q: WHY DID THEY CONTINUE TO INSIST NICOTINE IS NOT ADDICTIVE?
Glantz: Well, there's a couple of reasons. The first reason is that an addiction has come to have a strong social stigma associated with it, people don't wanna be addicted. The second reason is because it's a very important message for dealing with kids. Kids smoke to rebel, kids smoke to try, to take control of their lives away from grown ups and if you say to them you're gonna get addicted to this product and end up turning control of your body over to some cigarette company, that discourages kids from smoking. And finally it has tremendous legal implications in terms of all the products liability and medicaid suits that are pending now. It goes to the whole issue of free choice which the industry loves to make.
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