Special report: Philip Morris research requires constant tests, tweaks

Special report; second of two parts

Philip Morris wants smokers to try new things -- but they're a tough group to convince.

Just this year, Philip Morris pulled the silvery packs of its Marlboro UltraSmooth cigarettes from store shelves in Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Tampa, Fla., after a three-year effort to test a complicated new filter.

It gave up a few years back on an electric smoking device, called Accord, that it test-marketed here.

Now the tobacco giant's main active test-marketing effort is on smokeless tobacco -- products you put in your mouth instead of lighting up -- in what health advocates fear is an effort to recruit a new generation of nicotine addicts.

While researchers at Philip Morris's Center for Research & Technology in downtown Richmond still are working hard on re-engineering cigarettes, the toxic chemistry of burning tobacco isn't the only hurdle they face.

People who smoke are creatures of habit. Change in even in the subtlest ways makes them balk.

"Smokers generally don't like these; they're hard to smoke, they taste funny," Stanton Glantz, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco, said of various products that have been test-marketed.

The Accord, which was a cigarette inserted in a small handheld box that heated tobacco without setting it on fire, couldn't win over smokers who preferred taking a drag from a cigarette held between their fingers.

And with neither the UltraSmooth nor the Accord was Philip Morris claiming to make a safer smoke -- to do that, the company would have to be able to prove it.

Marlboro UltraSmooth, for example, was trying to crack two problems.

Cigarette companies have known for years that charcoal or other types of pure granules of carbon absorb more smoke than the fibrous "tow" or cellulose in most cigarette filters.

And they've thought for nearly as long that if they could ventilate the stream of smoke that smokers inhale, they would dilute and possibly reduce the noxious gases and particles ingested. Tobacco-control advocates believe such ventilation is not effective.

But most smokers never have liked the taste that charcoal imparts, according to Philip Morris patent documents for the Ultra filter.

And some of the company's several patents and applications for new filters say ventilating smoke affects something called "resistance to draw" -- basically the suction required to ingest smoke. That is something else smokers don't like to change.

Ultras tried to address both with its complicated filter. About three-eighths of an inch longer than a standard filter, it was a sandwich of two to four key pieces, instead of the simple cylinder of cellulose in most filters.

The most elaborate was tested in Salt Lake City. Next to the tobacco was a small plug of cellulose. Next to that was a bed of charcoal or carbon granules about a half-inch long, treated with flavorings. Two other pieces, one a plain plug of cellulose and the other a plug of cellulose with a piece of flavored yarn implanted, completed the sandwich.

The flavorings were meant to address the charcoal taste problem, and having them in two portions of the cigarette was intended to ensure a constant flavor as the cigarette burned down.

The filter had rows of small ventilation holes between the charcoal-bed portion and mouth end. The company hoped that by using cellulose plugs of differing densities, it could address the suction issue.

In Tampa, the company tested a filter with two plugs: One mixed 120 milligrams of carbon in with cellulose, and the other, smaller plug was just cellulose. In Atlanta, the mixed plug had less carbon.

But smokers didn't like them, said Jack Nelson, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Altria Group, Philip Morris' parent company.

"Consumers get to vote. They vote with their dollars," he said.

The charcoal was a problem because smokers feel it changes the taste, Nelson said.

And there was no reason for smokers to change, he said. Philip Morris quite carefully did not say the cigarettes reduced the risk of smoking.

Cigarettes generate thousands of compounds, and Nelson said no one can point to a specific one and say it is the problem.

"If you want to reduce the risk of smoking, you should quit smoking," he said.

Until an authoritative outside group such as the Food and Drug Administration can say a change in what smokers inhale reduces risk, Philip Morris can't sell anything as a safer cigarette.

In a letter to state attorneys general when it launched the UltraSmooth, Philip Morris said it would "not make reduced-exposure claims about Marlboro UltraSmooth because we do not have evidence that the application of these new carbon filters warrants a reduced-exposure claim."

Under the decade-old Master Settlement Agreement with most states, attorneys general can sue if they find that tobacco companies misrepresent the health effect of new products, or additives, filters or other ingredients.

But Philip Morris continues trying to make a better cigarette -- that is, one that smokers will choose over all others.

"We have chosen an adjacency growth strategy, looking at potential moves into complementary tobacco or tobacco-related products or processes that would allow PM USA to use its existing core infrastructure elements," said David R. Beran, executive vice president for finance. "PM USA's core is Marlboro," he added.

While Philip Morris has moved into the discount cigarette business, as have all its competitors, it sees premium products based on tobacco as its main profit producer, he said.

These days, the company is focusing its test-marking efforts on smokeless tobacco.

It is trying moist spitting tobacco under the Marlboro name in Atlanta. In Dallas, the company is testing Marlboro-brand snus, a Scandinavian-style powdered moist tobacco that is steamed and air-cured and does not require users to spit.

Gregory N. Connolly, a professor at the Harvard School of Public health, thinks one aim is to help smokers cope in a world that lets them smoke in fewer places.

The other, he believes, is to recruit new smokers. He thinks that is why Philip Morris uses so many sweet and menthol flavorings in oral tobacco. Connolly also thinks laboratory tests he has seen showing changes in nicotine content suggest Philip Morris is still tinkering with the blends and treatment to better win new customers it can lead on to cigarettes.

"I think they're doing whatever they can to slow the decline in cigarettes," he said.
Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or .

Contact John Reid Blackwell at (804) 775-8123 or .