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A look at FDA commissioner David A. Kessler's efforts to regulate the tobacco industry, and how a Republican-controlled Congress may stymie his mission.

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00:00tonight on frontline there has been a political revolution the eyes have it and dramatic change
00:14has been promised how different will america become there will be no compromise
00:20as the new republican congress takes power frontline examines how the first and most
00:28dramatic upheaval will come in the battle over cigarettes tonight on frontline the nicotine war
00:43funding for frontline is provided by the corporation for public broadcasting
00:50and by annual financial support from viewers like you
00:53this is frontline
01:05if not on april 14th 1994 for the first time ever the chief executives of the seven u.s tobacco
01:14companies appeared before congress if you raise your right hand do you swear that the testimony
01:20you're about to give us viewers watched as the ceos who represented a 54 billion dollar enterprise
01:26with 50 million customers struggled to defend themselves against a barrage of attacks
01:32the preponderance of medical experts in our country say nicotine is addicting and that there is solid
01:39indisputable proof that smoking causes lung cancer well we we have looked at the data and the data
01:46uh that we have been able to see is all the statistical data that has not convinced me
01:53that uh uh smoking causes death it's my understanding of how that number if you don't agree with the
02:00number then give us your number how many smokers die each year from smoking cigarettes i will explain
02:05no i want your answer we have a limited time i do not know this tense melodrama was only a small part
02:12of a story that would mix together science politics the fate of thousands of agricultural and industrial
02:18jobs my question and the public health of the nation do not agree with the surgeon general's estimate
02:23of over 400 000 smokers die i do not agree okay and it all hinged on a single substance a natural
02:30chemical present in the tobacco plant called nicotine do you believe nicotine is not addictive
02:36i believe nicotine is not addictive yes mr johnston uh congressman cigarettes and nicotine clearly do
02:44not meet the classic definitions of addiction there is no intoxication we'll take that as a no
02:50i don't believe that nicotine or our products are addictive i believe nicotine is not addictive
02:56i believe that nicotine is not addictive i believe that nicotine is not addictive and i too believe
03:06that nicotine is not addictive the story had begun more than two years before inside the food and drug
03:14administration when commissioner dr david kessler had discreetly begun to examine the possibility of
03:21regulating tobacco a former pediatrician kessler felt passionately that a way had to be found to stop
03:29the next generation of kids from taking up smoking the more kessler and his fda colleagues studied the
03:36tobacco industry the more convinced they became that cigarettes were not a habit like coffee according to
03:43many scientists the nicotine in cigarettes was a powerful addicting drug and drugs were what the fda
03:49regulated on february 24 1994 kessler decided to act he released a letter in which he wrote evidence
03:57brought to our attention is accumulating that suggests that cigarette manufacturers may intend that their
04:04products contain nicotine to satisfy an addiction on the part of some of their customers while polite in
04:12tone the letter's message was shocking kessler was implying that the fda might have the authority
04:18to treat the tobacco industry as being in the drug business and in principle shut them down congress
04:25immediately wanted to hear more the cigarette industry has attempted to frame the debate on smoking
04:34as the right of each american to choose the question we must ask is whether smokers really have that choice
04:45consider these facts two-thirds of adults who smoke say they wish they could quit after surgery for lung cancer
05:02almost half of smokers resume smoking even when a smoker has his or her larynx removed 40 percent try smoking
05:13again the nicotine delivered by tobacco products is highly addictive what kessler had done was
05:22unprecedented simply stated if nicotine was legally a drug he had a duty to regulate products that contained
05:30it like cigarettes the fda regulates the substances and devices we consume from the efficacy of drugs and
05:38vitamins to the purity of the food we eat it assures the safety and reliability of everything from the strength of condoms
05:49to the durability of breast implants
05:53the fda had not regulated tobacco because traditionally it had been defined as an agricultural product
05:59it's true that tobacco starts out as an agricultural plant that is grown harvested cured and sold in much the same way it has been for hundreds of years
06:14but this rustic image disguises the technology that now goes into manufacturing cigarettes
06:20while cigarettes originally were made from dried tobacco leaves chopped and rolled in paper
06:26today the manufacture of cigarettes is a highly sophisticated process involving the removal
06:31and addition of hundreds of ingredients in highly controlled ways if the tobacco companies were
06:38controlling nicotine content in cigarettes with the intention of keeping their customers hooked
06:44then kessler reasoned he had a legal basis for regulating cigarettes as drugs
06:49cigarette companies would not be selling an agricultural product but a drug nicotine and should be subject
06:58like all drug manufacturers to the food drug and cosmetic act which the fda was compelled by law to enforce
07:10within days of kessler's letter an abc day one report brought the industry more bad news
07:16it claimed to have hard evidence the industry was manipulating nicotine levels in cigarettes there's
07:21something tobacco companies don't want you to know why are you artificially spiking your cigarettes with
07:27nicotine we are not in any way doing that cigarettes they'll hook you fast and it's not just an accident of nature
07:38philip morris hit back with a 10 billion dollar lawsuit against abc
07:42these allegations are not true and abc knows that they are not true philip morris does not in any way
07:51shape or form spike its cigarettes with nicotine nicotine then the industry's public relations
07:57organization the tobacco institute took the offensive so there is no process that adds nicotine to the
08:04cigarette nicotine is not added during the manufacturing process it is that simple
08:10the scene was set for a showdown in washington while traditionally the tobacco industry had great
08:15influence in congress in the spring of 1994 there was a powerful group of anti-tobacco congressmen
08:22including democrats henry waxman of california the chairman of the key subcommittee overseeing tobacco
08:29mike sinar of oklahoma and ron wyden of oregon my name is ed the tobacco industry still had many
08:36strong supporters republicans thomas bliley of virginia alex mcmillan from north carolina and dennis
08:42hastert of illinois and so when on april 14 1994 the seven ceos appeared before waxman's committee
08:51they realized it was vital they challenged kessler's contention that nicotine was a highly addictive drug
08:57like heroin or cocaine commissioner kessler and members of the subcommittee contended that nicotine
09:03is an addictive drug and therefore smokers are drug addicts i strenuously object to that premise
09:11i strenuously object to that conclusion smoking is not intoxicating no one gets drunk from cigarettes
09:18no one is likely to be arrested for driving under the influence of cigarettes our consumers smoke for
09:26many reasons smokers are not drug users or drug addicts and we do not appreciate or accept being
09:32characterized as such because yes mr chairman i am one of the 50 million smokers in this country
09:39would you rather board a plane with a pilot who just smoked a cigarette or one with a pilot who just
09:46had a couple of beers or snorted cocaine or shot heroin or popped some pills dr kessler's definition of
09:55addiction would classify most coffee cola and tea drinkers as addicts if cigarettes were addictive
10:07could almost 43 million americans have quit smoking almost all of them on their own without any outside
10:15help i'm struck by what i think is a calculated attempt to trivialize the devastating health among the
10:22people watching the hearings were mrs eleanor ross and her family eleanor ross has smoked for almost 60
10:29years she has inoperable lung cancer emphysema has suffered two heart attacks and a stroke still she
10:36hasn't been able to stop smoking to devote your time and i've quit a thousand times well you quit one time there from
10:42during your chemo during your chemo you stopped which was good or did you stop for about two years
10:49i don't know one time i did stop yeah come to think of it i did stop and i gained 12 pounds
10:55i couldn't get out of my own way no no you would think if anyone would be motivated to quit smoking
11:03it would be mrs eleanor ross it's 50 dollars they go 100 odd everywhere my husband smoked three to
11:09four packages of cigarettes a day for a great many years and he did die of lung cancer john had to go
11:16and get it and last year i was very ill i was there for whole months with i believe it was double pneumonia
11:23and congestive heart failure and they didn't have much hope they thought that i would have to go
11:29into a rehabilitation home and it looked like i was going to come home with some uh oxygen and so
11:37forth but i i persevered and fortunately i didn't have to
11:44i've gone the patches route uh three times i believe and i've been to hypnotists and and i have
11:56been to that bio energy person and i've been to non-smoking things and no way can i stop smoking i would
12:05try very hard why then does she continue to smoke is she addicted to nicotine or simply too
12:13weak-willed to quit i don't know i don't know just no self-control perhaps maybe that's where i don't have
12:23self-control on dr neil benowitz has seen many cases like eleanor ross he has studied the effects of
12:33nicotine on humans for more than 15 years the issue for addiction is to what degree does the drug
12:42control your behavior the drug meaning a substance that is not food and is not required for life
12:50because obviously air controls your behavior yet we don't think of air as an addiction people need
12:55air to live they need food to live no one needs nicotine to live but once they become regular smokers
13:03they don't function very well without nicotine about six to twelve milligrams of nicotine are contained
13:09within most commercial cigarettes when the cigarette is burned the nicotine is boiled off
13:19those droplets are breathed into the lung and then rapidly gets transported in the bloodstream to the
13:25heart and then to the brain and other body tissues when you're smoking cigarettes throughout the day
13:32levels of nicotine build up over six to eight hours of smoking and then they persist at a constant level
13:41throughout most of the day while you're smoking and then they fall overnight
13:46some smokers are so addicted that they wake up at night they can't even sleep through the whole night
13:52without smoking scientists at the national institute on drug abuse have long argued that nicotine was a
14:02powerful addictive drug pharmacologist jack henningfield a lot of times when people say that nicotine isn't
14:10like drugs like cocaine they're talking about social consequences and issues that have to do with
14:15availability and whether or not the drug is illegal or not they're not talking about the basic biology
14:21when you take a hit of nicotine it sets up a biological chain reaction in the brain in much the same way
14:26that taking a hit of cocaine sets up a biological chain reaction a lot of this pleasure of smoking is due to
14:34the receptors in the brain not just the taste in the mouth and we know this because we can give drugs
14:41that block the receptors in the brain and then we ask people how their cigarettes are they say they
14:46don't taste as good i don't get any taste from them well they're they're getting all the taste
14:50that they usually used to get from the tobacco they're just not affecting the receptors in the brain
14:56the tobacco industry however argues that smokers like mrs elena ross are not nicotine addicts
15:02they have a bad habit frontline invited the tobacco companies and the tobacco institute to
15:07participate in this program but they declined to be interviewed saying their position was already on
15:12record so we have drawn their arguments about nicotine from different sources if you look at
15:19the definition of addiction there are two different ones we talk about people being news junkies we
15:23talk about chocoholics we talk about being hooked on exercise that's a very loose jargony word that we've
15:30all somehow seem to adopt it into our lexicon then there's a classical definition of addiction which talks
15:36about withdrawal symptoms that puts you in the hospital that talks about intoxication it talks
15:41about ruining your lifestyle um you know resorting to crime in order to get a drug none of those
15:47things fit nicotine or smoking that's why you can smoke a cigarette and drive a car that's why people
15:51who quit smoking and there is many people in the united states who have quit smoking as now currently
15:56smoke um that's why people who quit smoking are walking down the street they're not in rehab centers for
16:02goodness sakes when you look at the features of addicting drugs you can look at a different feature
16:08and put different drugs at the top of the list if all you're looking at is reinforcement in animals
16:14then you put cocaine at the top of the list if you're looking for severity of the withdrawal from
16:20a life-threatening perspective well then you've got alcohol at the top and the short-acting barbiturates
16:26if you're talking about tolerance well you put nicotine right up there with heroin as far as
16:32remarkable level of tolerance that the body develops if you're looking at intoxication you put alcohol
16:39back up at the top as the drug that produces the most pronounced intoxication even in people that have
16:45used it for years when you look at the constellation of features of addicting drugs you see that nicotine
16:54is right in the top tier with cocaine heroin and alcohol the tobacco industry likes to focus on
17:04intoxication because that is about the only consequence that is sometimes associated with
17:10addicting drugs on which nicotine comes out very low but if smoking were addictive how could so many
17:17people have quit we know that with health people can beat addictions and we know that many people
17:24beat their addictions on their own over the last 30 years more than 40 million people have quit smoking
17:31that amounts to lots of lives saved the bad news is that that only amounts to about two and a half percent
17:40two and one half percent only that have been able to quit smoking per year on average that is a
17:46lousy rate of quitting by oneself when we compare that to what we know about heroin addiction cocaine
17:53addiction and alcoholism does any of that hurt you back here at all when i talk not particularly
18:00mrs ross's doctor dr silvestri of boston's deaconess hospital like the vast majority of physicians
18:06wishes his patients wouldn't smoke there are more than 50 000 studies linking smoking and disease
18:13and a virtual consensus among doctors and scientists that nicotine is a highly addictive drug
18:22building on this consensus castler now needed to prove that the tobacco industry was deliberately
18:27manipulating nicotine with the intention of keeping smokers like mrs ross hooked
18:32you don't hear much about nicotine on the tours rj reynolds offers to the public whatever the
18:47scientific community says their official position is that nicotine is a naturally occurring ingredient
18:53of tobacco that is crucial to the taste of cigarettes as in the past they are ready to fight for the future
19:00of their industry as long as you like thanks very much despite warning labels and advertising
19:06restrictions the tobacco industry has been very successful at repelling attempts to fully regulate
19:11cigarettes gaining exemptions from all key consumer legislation the consumer product safety act
19:19the term consumer product does not include tobacco and tobacco products the fair packaging and labeling act
19:26consumer commodity does not include any tobacco or tobacco product the federal hazardous substances act the term hazardous
19:35substance shall not apply to tobacco and tobacco products the toxic substances control act the term chemical
19:44substance does not include tobacco or any tobacco product
19:47tobacco product if you want to look at how they've been able to hold back the tide of public health
19:55opinion for so many decades you begin with a very strong and rather traditional political base of support
20:03the tobacco farmers in in a very concentrated part of the country
20:08michael pershuk former commissioner of the federal trade commission has made a career of studying the politics of tobacco
20:14america and analyzing where its political power lies one of the gauges of political power and or
20:22power in the legislative process is not just numbers i mean the poll results have always shown a majority of americans large
20:29majorities for example for banning cigarette advertising and other restrictions but intensity the intensity with which a group
20:36uh focuses on an issue uh and the intensity with which the members of congress who represent that group
20:44focus on that issue is critical in terms of uh the political power when they're willing to say on health care
20:51we don't give a damn if the citizens of kentucky go without health care
20:56we're not going to give an inch on and we're not going to support any health care plan unless you keep that
21:02cigarette excise tax down that's the kind of intensity of commitment that creates political power
21:08inside congress it also creates it outside with constituents i am proud to represent thousands of
21:15honest hard-working men and women who earn their livelihood producing this legal product
21:21and i'll be damned if they are to be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness mr johnson i want
21:28to be absolutely certain of this because there's been a lot of interest in this subject and at least one
21:34of your competitors has sued abc over it once and for all does your company spike its cigarettes with nicotine
21:42no mr congressman we do not spike our products with nicotine
21:47mr camel mr bliley we do not spike our cigarettes and we have sued the abc company for accusing us of
21:58doing so mr tish no sir we do not spike our cigarettes with nicotine mr hargan at liga we do not spike our
22:06cigarettes with nicotine mr sanifer we do not add nicotine to our cigarettes no sir mr johnson
22:12we do not spike our cigarettes at all thank you thank you mr chairman for your indulge the industry
22:20protested that far from adding nicotine up to a quarter of the nicotine present in the leaf was
22:26lost during manufacture kessler and others they said had misunderstood the manufacturing process
22:32it is indeed rather complex as this philip morris film shows with ammonium hydroxide and water to
22:38release the pectin a naturally occurring carbohydrate in plants when heated pectin forms a gel-like material
22:45that binds the particles together flavorings and preservatives are added and the mixture is cast
22:50onto a moving belt never at any point in the processing of any of these components has any additional
22:57nicotine been added but kessler maintained that adding nicotine wasn't the issue he had not spoken of
23:03nicotine spiking but of nicotine manipulation it made little difference to kessler whether the industry
23:09was adding additional nicotine to cigarettes or manipulating the naturally occurring nicotine in the
23:14leaf the issue was whether they were intentionally delivering precisely controlled addictive doses of
23:20nicotine to smokers under oath before congress the ceos denied they manipulated nicotine claiming they
23:27didn't even measure it during manufacture the amount of nicotine in any cigarette they argued was a
23:32side effect of the level of tar the key ingredient for taste we design cigarettes according to tar
23:39and that's why it's very difficult for all of us to express it as nicotine we design we design in the
23:45early stages for nicotine for tar excuse me if you would join us like the fda experts did you would find
23:53that we actually only ever measure nicotine in two places one before the tobacco enters the factory and then
24:01eighteen months later after it's a finished product and in those finished products they went on to claim
24:07the nicotine delivered to smokers has gone down dramatically over the years as the companies
24:12offered low tar and nicotine brands to health conscious smokers according to the figures written
24:18on many cigarette packs some brands deliver tiny amounts of nicotine to smokers as little as a tenth of
24:24a milligram but critics say these numbers aren't what they seem what you need to know about these
24:31cigarettes is the tobacco in the lowest yield cigarettes and the highest yield cigarettes are
24:36the same tobacco with the same amount of nicotine or even more in the low yield cigarettes so so it's only
24:42the machine testing which makes the yields differently for several decades nicotine and tar yields have been
24:49generated by a special test monitored by the federal trade commission in this test measured machine puffs
24:56of smoke are analyzed to get the official fdc nicotine yields but critics say many cigarettes have been
25:03specially designed to beat the machines ventilation holes in the filter are specially positioned to suck
25:09in air some cigarettes even have long channels running along the length of the filter all designed
25:15critics charge to dilute the smoke going into the machines the machine puffs from the very tip doesn't
25:22block any of the holes and um therefore you can get as much as 90 percent mixture of fresh air plus
25:30tobacco smoke however a smoker when they smoke the sort of a cigarette finds that it's like smoking air
25:36the draw characteristics are not good the taste is not good and what they learn is one that if they hold
25:42the cigarette in a certain way say they hold it like this then without even knowing they're doing
25:47it they're blocking the ventilation holes and the draw characteristics and taste gets better or they
25:53can take it and put it in their mouth a little further like this if they put it in the mouth like this then
25:58their lips are blocking the ventilation holes the draw and taste is better and it's been well shown
26:04even on smoking machines if you tape up these holes it becomes a regular cigarette
26:07the tobacco industry disagrees think of an ftc number as an epa gas mileage number if i drive my
26:18car fast i guess less gas mileage than what the sticker says i drive it easy i get more so it is with
26:26uh with the ftc tar numbers if i may smoke one cigarette differently from another within a cigarette i will
26:37get different tire nicotine per puff depending on how you're saying you could get different
26:43levels of nicotine from two cigarettes from the same pack depending on how i smoke it if i'm under stress
26:54where do you see the cigarette i light up after this hearing it's probably agricultural product
27:00or drug delivery device it depended on the intent of the cigarette manufacturers
27:07and that in turn depended on what they knew about the addictive properties of nicotine
27:12and when they knew it to answer these questions kessler and his fda staff began to look for
27:18ex-industry employees willing to talk about the tobacco company's highly secretive practices
27:23one man they were interested in was dr victor de noble recruited to work at philip morris in 1979
27:32he set up a lab to find a substitute for nicotine that was equally reinforcing but avoided its
27:38cardiovascular side effects nicotine wasn't studied very heavily at that time it was only just be coming
27:46under investigation by the national institute of drug abuse so it became a real challenge i saw it as a
27:51real positive way to to make something come back to the from the scientific community to the public
27:59working with his colleague paul mele de noble set out to model nicotine's reinforcing properties
28:05in animals using techniques developed at the national institute on drug abuse he showed that a rat could
28:11be made to self-administer intravenous nicotine by pushing a lever in much the same way as happens with
28:17heroin and cocaine while this doesn't by itself prove a substance is addictive in humans it is a
28:24hallmark of addiction he then used this model to test nicotine substitutes to see if the rats found them
28:30equally reinforcing after getting philip morris's permission he wrote up the research for publication
28:36but before the article made it into print he got a visit from the company's lawyers
28:41they had told us that there was some litigation against the tobacco industry they didn't specifically
28:48say philip morris we didn't find out that until much later and that they wanted to look through
28:52our files because the data that we were generating may in fact be involved in that litigation and they
28:57proceeded to spend several weeks understanding uh what we did in the laboratory actually coming in the lab
29:03and viewing the animals one of the phil morris attorneys told us that uh the work we were doing
29:11looked made them look like a drug company and they just couldn't afford to do that work after a series
29:18of meetings including a visit from the ceo of philip morris de noble was told that he could not
29:23publish the research or talk about it publicly for the time being disappointed de noble continued quietly with
29:30other work then on april 5th 1984 his supervisor jim charles asked to see him jim went into a uh
29:40dialogue of of how how wonderful a job i had done for the company and with the reinforcing effects and
29:47the analog programs and quite frankly i thought i was being promoted i had just been promoted the year
29:50before paul was promoted the year before that and i said gee this is great i'm getting another promotion
29:57and about ten minutes into the conversation he said but as of three o'clock today and it's ten after
30:02three we're no longer doing any behavioral pharmacology shut off your experiments kill your
30:09animals turn over your files that was it about a week after this happened they brought me back into
30:17the building to open up the safe and literally the lab was gone i mean the computers were gone the cages
30:22were gone the animals were gone the wires were gone the benches were gone the surgery tables were gone
30:28everything was gone it was like it was a vacant room told they had no future at philip morris de noble
30:34and melee left the company the noble made one more attempt in 1986 to publish but after philip morris's
30:40legal counsel threatened action he gave it up and got on with his life
30:44there things stood until one day in april 1994 he got a call from an fda investigator asking him if
30:53he'd be willing to talk about 6 30 or something it took the powers of congress to free de noble from
31:01his confidentiality agreement with philip morris but his story raised the question of whether some
31:06of the tobacco executives had been completely open with congress and if not what had been the cost to
31:12the american people if your studies had gotten out at the time that they were written at a minimum
31:22at a bare minimum other scientists would have followed up on the research that you had done
31:29and then clearly the american people could have made a more informed choice about smoking would you
31:34agree with that dr de noble uh yes i i do agree with that it was the reason that that paul and i took
31:42the risk in 86 to try to publish this material and present it the scientific community had the the
31:48right to look at this research and to confirm or disconfirm it philip morris was quick to respond
31:54the american people deserve better than innuendo leaked documents conveniently changed opinions and
32:02scientific sensationalism right about the suppression of the findings of their work now they said that
32:08they said that it was suppressed and they said it had nothing to do with proprietary reasons and they
32:12found that unusual well that's one of the things that the subcommittee has asked us to investigate
32:16and provide them for documents we're going to do that as soon as we have all the documents and we know
32:21what the facts are we'll we'll tell you what they are for kessler and his team denoble's story showed
32:26that philip morris had clear knowledge of the reinforcing properties of nicotine in 1983 and had synthesized and
32:33tested drugs as possible nicotine substitutes but to build a solid case against all the tobacco companies
32:40kessler needed more evidence in may 1994 a series of internal memos and letters purported to be tobacco
32:47industry communications began appearing in the media these documents indicated that high-ranking
32:53employees in brown and williamson and other tobacco companies had knowledge of nicotine addiction in the early 1960s
33:05we are then in the business of selling nicotine an addictive drug effective in the release of stress
33:11mechanisms addison yeaman general counsel july 1963 nicotine is not only a very fine drug but the techniques
33:20of administration by smoking has distinct psychological advantages smoking is a habit of addiction sir
33:27charles ellis scientific advisor to british american tobacco company 1962 think of the cigarette pack as
33:34a storage container for a day's supply of nicotine think of the cigarette as a dispenser for a dose unit of
33:40nicotine tobacco industry internal memo 1972 the industry argued that these statements if genuine did not prove the
33:50tobacco companies the tobacco companies knew nicotine was addictive only that some of their employees held these views
33:57meanwhile kessler and his team at the fta were methodically continuing their investigation
34:04mitch zeller special assistant to kessler was interested in the possibility that some companies
34:09might be breeding tobacco plants high in nicotine as a way of manipulating nicotine levels in cigarettes
34:16one day zeller got a tip that if he checked the patents he might find something interesting
34:23he instigated an extensive search of national and international patents looking for anything about
34:29high nicotine tobacco plants and finally he came up with this a brazilian patent written in portuguese
34:37the patent spoke of a type of tobacco with a six percent concentration of nicotine more than twice the usual amount
34:47and the owner of the patent was the brown and williamson tobacco corporation
34:53we saw that brown and williamson had at least patented a variety of flu cured tobacco that was double the
35:00nicotine content of the average flu cured tobacco and that they had done this overseas in brazil well
35:07that piqued our interest we wanted to know a lot more about this and so we simply tried to track down
35:11the names of the people who were identified as the patent holders and and took the investigation from there
35:19why zeller wondered would brown and williamson be involved in developing a high nicotine tobacco plant
35:25bit by bit zeller pieced together the story of a specially bred high nicotine tobacco plant called y1
35:38brown and williamson had developed y1 and tested it on an experimental farm in wilson north carolina
35:45the tobacco was shipped to new jersey where the seeds were processed by a biotechnology company
35:50and exported to southern brazil to the farming region of rio grande do sul
35:56there zeller learned brown and williamson had grown quantities of y1 tobacco
36:01growing y1 abroad was one thing but had they re-imported the y1 into the united states for use in
36:07commercial cigarettes zeller dispatched investigators to ports like charleston south carolina where tobacco
36:14is imported to find out we had somebody painstakingly go through
36:20millions of invoices to see if there were any references to this thing called y1 tobacco
36:26and it really was like looking for a needle in a haystack
36:32but eventually they found a brown and williamson invoice referring to a shipment of a half million pounds
36:39of tobacco
36:43variety y1
36:48within days brown and williamson admitted to zeller that they had in fact imported four million pounds of y1
36:55and put it in these brands of cigarettes
36:58y1 they told zeller enabled them to produce a low tar cigarette with a moderate level of nicotine
37:03for zeller this was hard evidence that brown and williamson was independently manipulating nicotine
37:10publicly the cigarette companies have said that they do not design for nicotine when they design and
37:18manufacture cigarettes that if they design for anything they designed for tar
37:23the significance of the y1 story is it shows that in fact they are manipulate manipulating and controlling
37:29nicotine levels brown and williamson admitted to us they wanted to lower the tar content
37:35of cigarettes and maintain the nicotine content if that's not a perfect example of manipulation and
37:42control of nicotine and cigarettes i don't know what is
37:46kessler and zeller's aggressive investigation had made them extremely unpopular with the tobacco
37:51industry and its political supporters when they appeared before congress to give details of the y1
37:57story they faced tough questioning from republican congressmen who wanted them to reveal the private
38:03sources that had helped them break the y1 affair i am not prepared at this point to make uh investigative
38:12files uh uh what i mean i'm not prepared to make those investigative files that could jeopardize
38:18either an investigation or jeopardize certain confidential uh informants that's why we have
38:25congressman established procedures and i'm willing to follow those established procedures uh of course
38:30dr kessler i i'm listening to this and i'm kind of surreal here are you saying that you don't i mean you
38:36think that congress members of congress this subcommittee the whole committee have to make intelligent
38:41decisions right but you're going to give us or spoon feed us only that information that you want to spoon feed us
38:47that you're not going to give us all the information that's available to you but you don't think we
38:53should have that information because you don't trust us that's contempt i think that's contempt of
38:57congress sir congressman there are established procedures and we will follow what are those
39:03tell me what those established procedures are i'd be happy tell them right now here's members of
39:07congress what are the established procedures we have a tell me what are they you're telling mumbo jumbo
39:15this is nothing more than grandstanding if dr kessler had been sincere or sincerely interested
39:24in getting the facts all he had to do was ask brown and weaves two days later tommy sandifer ceo
39:32of brown and williamson got a similar grilling how did you manage to grow and ship millions of pounds
39:37of y1 if the usda permits only experimental quantities of seed to leave the country in
39:42the first that's a good question i don't know is there any additional y1 being stored anywhere in
39:47the world under your control
39:51under my control ownership under my ownership not that i know of sister corporations or anything
39:57else there may be some sister cooper corporations that have some y1 yes will you provide that
40:02information to the record also yes i will sandifer maintained he knew few of the details of y1 and
40:08promised to hand over documents to congress i think you all are going to get more and more
40:14marginalized you will become more and more irrelevant in this debate and it just seems to me there's a
40:20better way to do business well congressman it's it's hard for me to envision becoming more of an outcast
40:27than i already feel that i am the political troubles of the tobacco industry had not gone unnoticed by
40:38attorneys like the new orleans lawyer wendell gautier
40:45gautier had been seriously thinking about litigation against the tobacco industry
40:49ever since his best friend pete castano had died of lung cancer in 1993.
40:54following the funeral pete's widow diane had come to see him shortly after peter died i received the
41:03death certificate and the primary cause of death was cancer and the second one was cigarette smoking
41:11and obviously it was something that i've got very upset about got very angered about and i contacted
41:17wendell at which time he informed me that there was really nothing we could do that you know everything
41:23that's been brought against the tobacco company almost everything up until then it was a losing
41:28battle and that there was really nothing we could do about it but the events of 1994 especially
41:34kessler's focus on nicotine addiction changed gautier's mind addiction appears nowhere on the warning label
41:43and i the manufacturer stand before congress in the world and swear that it's not addicting now
41:51if i were a smoker which i am not but if i were i have a right to rely on the manufacturer who knows
41:59more about his product than anyone else if he says it's not addicting i should be entitled to believe
42:06that it's not addicting he made it a successful and wealthy attorney gautier knew the risks of taking
42:13on the tobacco industry after all they had never lost a personal injury case the reason they've won
42:19before is they outman the plaintiff attorney they outspent the plaintiff attorney and consequently they
42:28outlasted them all the way through the supreme courts making litigation that should have been two
42:34three-year litigation eight twelve-year litigation this time they will not outman they will not outspend and
42:42they will not outlast we're here for the duration now the tobacco industry will have to deal with a
42:49group of 50 of the top law firms in the country experts in corporate litigation from asbestos to breast implants
42:57with gautier at the helm they plan to take on the ultimate legal foe gautier has some heavy hitters
43:04on his team elizabeth cabraser won a 4.2 billion dollar global settlement against breast implant manufacturers
43:14ron motley won over 500 million dollars in asbestos litigation
43:20diane nast won a 458 million dollar settlement against six major airlines
43:25gautier has gathered the cream of the country's personal injury lawyers in new orleans to plan
43:31tactics in a billion dollar federal class action lawsuit on behalf of 40 million current former
43:37and deceased nicotine dependent smokers all done in the name of diane castano each firm has put up
43:44one hundred thousand dollars towards a five million dollar yearly war chest and they say they are ready
43:49to continue as long as is necessary in their other cases what they have successfully urged is listen
43:59this country is based on freedom of choice and on assumption of the risk if you
44:06freely freely want to assume a risk that should be your right in the united states and you know what i
44:12agree with that they are completely right but for you to make a free choice you have to have
44:18all of the information they deceived you and conceal the information about addiction that they knew
44:26of and they asked you to choose without all of the information so you didn't make an intelligent choice
44:34while goche's group is the biggest dozens of other legal actions against the tobacco companies are underway
44:40in one groundbreaking case the state of minnesota in collaboration with blue cross blue shield
44:45is suing the tobacco industry for cigarette related health costs this morning we filed a historic
44:51lawsuit charging the tobacco cartel with conspiracy consumer fraud and antitrust violations and demanding
44:59that tobacco companies not minnesota taxpayers pay the staggering health care costs caused by the
45:06company's deception and violations of law the companies denying nicotine is addictive and deny
45:15concealing important health information from the public but in court their lawyers will have to deal
45:20with witnesses like victor de noble i left the company in 1984 the company was years and years and years
45:29ahead of anybody anybody else out there we knew more about tobacco tobacco products byproducts nicotine than any
45:38government or federal institution did philip morris for example know that smokers were blocking the
45:46ventilation holes absolutely yes there's no doubt about that in fact there was a project in which this
45:52psychology group at philip morris actually filmed people smoking to determine where
45:56filter and dilution holes should be placed so that the fingers would cover them up
46:00the commissioner of the food and drug administration dr david kessler is with me here in studio 3a in
46:07washington for this hour of talk of the nation welcome to the program doctor great being here right
46:11in a few short months david kessler had changed the debate over cigarettes now tobacco was spoken of
46:18in the same way as illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine thomas welcome to the program hi uh many years ago
46:27i was addicted to cocaine for about two or three years when i realized what i was doing to myself
46:34i stopped and i stopped cold turkey i'm still smoking i've been smoking since i'm 16 i'm 52 years old
46:43and i can't stop smoking i smoke about a pack a pack and a half cigarettes a day and it was harder to
46:50stop smoke it's harder to stop smoking yes i mean ask smokers whether uh the nicotine is addictive
46:57in cigarettes and i think i mean just listening to smokers i mean they tell you unequivocally
47:02how addictive it is well let's go to kessler didn't plan to ban tobacco but as a former pediatrician
47:08he did want to find a way to stop the next generation of children from taking up smoking
47:12and tightening up the access that we could get fewer kids to stop smoking or are they going to get the
47:18cigarettes anyway well it depends on which way you look at it i know kids my my age that can just walk
47:23into the convenience store and boom they got the cigarettes in their hand let me ask you a question
47:26if we just cut down on cigarette vending machines would that help no not help at all no that's just
47:32that's just the way to you know what else would you do besides cigarette vending machines well you'd
47:37have you definitely have to put more enforcement on the on the on the subject and who's selling you have
47:41to put in much enforcement on cigarettes as you do on beer and alcohol smoking is a habit that starts in
47:48childhood two-thirds of all smokers start smoking before the age of 16 by age 18 that figure rises
47:55to nearly 90 percent people who don't start smoking before the age of 20 probably never will
48:02kessler had many options from reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes to banning advertising
48:08critics say is aimed at children like joe camel ironically on october 10th as if symbolizing the terrible
48:15year tobacco had faced joe camel was taken down from his place in times square to be replaced with
48:21a public health warning not to eat fat smoking was now banned in places from mcdonald's to the pentagon
48:28from amtrak to the airlines nervous shareholders were urging philip morris and rj reynolds to split
48:34off their tobacco divisions from the main business it looked to some observers like the tobacco industry was
48:40finished from abc this is world news tonight with peter jenny republicans are now the majority party both
48:51in the congress and in the governor's mansions across the nation the only power base the democrats still
48:57have is the one that was not at stake yesterday the presidency itself within 24 hours of the election
49:04it was clear that the political fortunes of tobacco had been transformed henry waxman lost the
49:10chairmanship of the subcommittee on health and environment gone altogether from the new congress
49:15will be mike sinar of oklahoma producing this legal this january republican thomas bliley of virginia
49:22will be sitting in the chair and he wasted no time in announcing his intentions
49:27what's the purpose of continuing the hearings and dragging these uh company uh company executives
49:35before the committee and and uh in effect beating up on them uh i don't i don't think that's necessary
49:43bliley went on to say he would try to block any attempts by the food and drug administration to regulate tobacco
49:48despite the setbacks kessler can continue if bill clinton supports him but can a weakened president
50:00afford to back kessler's bold plan too much partisan conflict too little there will be people inside the
50:08white house and close to the white house who will go to clinton and say if you support what kessler is
50:14proposing to do you will put the final nail in the coffin of of the democratic party in the south
50:20that's a powerful argument uh on the other hand i can't think of a better issue to challenge the
50:25republicans on than the issue of children and tobacco the issue of the cigarette companies
50:31and their exploitation of vulnerable children i think that's a strong issue a strong issue
50:36politically for him and one that he may see the the virtue of standing firm on tomorrow the new
50:43congress begins with the republicans in charge there probably won't be any investigation of the
50:49tobacco industry incoming speaker newt gingrich has characterized dr kessler as quote a bully and
50:55a thug might the new congress turn the tables on kessler and now choose to investigate him and the
51:02activities of the fda
51:03inside the fda things are tense a few days after the election kessler canceled an interview for this
51:13program that had been arranged for over a month so it's not clear what kessler will do next will he finish
51:21what he started or will his initiative to regulate tobacco meet the same fate as other reform efforts
51:28and be smothered by the political realities of washington
51:47dear frontline i am so grateful for frontline and now it's time for your letters our recent program
51:54the kevorkian file which examined dr jack kevorkian's controversial record of physician-assisted suicides
52:00drew numerous letters in support of his work as well as the following viewers concerns
52:06dear frontline were euthanasia to become a profitable specialty with high fees there would develop abuses
52:14more and more reasons would be found and some patients might be talked into it i say that in case
52:20of severe and hopeless misery where compassion cries out for euthanasia
52:25let it be done for no fee at all this would eliminate conflicts of interest keep our consciences clear
52:31and preempt the would-be thanatologists george b markle fourth md carlsbad new mexico
52:42dear frontline as a clinical oncology social worker i have heard the suffering the torment
52:48fears hopes and wishes from hundreds of people perhaps dr kevorkian's methodology will finally
52:54assist the legal and medical professions to reclaim the responsibility in taking care of the entire
53:00human being not just treatment of a disease the doctors and lawyers are not to be blamed but now need
53:07assistance in a far more complex world the question is not who shall live or who shall die the question
53:14is now whose right is it to say john sworsky csw long island new york dear frontline as i watched your
53:24recent program the kevorkian file i discerned a bias in favor of this person's activities instead of
53:31strongly opposing the taking of life or at least presenting more views opposing such acts you raised dr
53:37kevorkian to a hero's level the various attacks on life in america today is sadly becoming more and
53:43more apparent abortion capital punishment and now euthanasia i shudder to think of what or who could
53:50be next could it be an attack on doctors or journalists sincerely william j grant south boston massachusetts
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54:12next time on frontline by the time a child leaves elementary school she's witnessed 8 000 murders
54:19i'll give you something that speaks about this don't shoot me
54:24i'll shoot i don't think so think again
54:30killers on the loose in alaska when we come back
54:32what are we doing to our children does tv kill next time on frontline
54:43if you raise your right hand do you swear that the testimony you're about to give is the truth the
54:48whole truth and nothing but the truth
55:01the truth is
55:16the truth is
55:18the truth is
55:19the truth is
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