Cigaret Advertising

For eleven months The Reader's Digest held its peace while the makers of Old Gold cigarets jammed the air with commercials ballyhooing how "impartial scientific tests conducted by The Reader's Digest showed Old Golds contain less nicotine than any other well-known brand." People who remembered how microscopically small was the puff given Old Golds by the Digest and knew how strongly Editor DeWitt Wallace feels about exaggerated ads (his magazine accepts no ads at all) wondered how long it would be before he cracked back.

This month some 9,000,000 Reader's Digest families got the answer -- a five-page debunking not only of the Old Gold blurb, but of all the other big cigaret advertisers as well. The Digest had waited until the Federal Trade Commission issued complaints against the manufacturers of Lucky Strike, Camel, Old Gold and Philip Morris cigarets. The Commission made these complaints:

> American Tobacco Co. (Lucky Strike) claims interminably that "among the men who know tobacco best it's Luckies two to one," also insists that it pays "more than the average market price" for Lucky tobacco. Says FTC : 1 ) tobacco growers, warehousemen and auctioneers will praise any brand to win company good will; 2) each major cigaret producer pays more than the "average market price" for his cigaret tobacco, because that price is actually the average paid for all tobacco including chewing tobacco and snuff.

> R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co (Camels) prints testimonials from prominent people, and also claims that Camels aid digestion. The retort: 1) many of the testimonials are written by the company and not even read by the people who sign them: many others are false; 2) all tobacco actually interferes with digestion.

> P Lorillard Co. (Old Golds) has trip-hammered the claim that its cigarets contain less nicotine than others, ever since the Digest's tests a year ago showed this to be technically true. But the Digest now reports the FTC complaint that Old Gold's ballyhoo "carefully omits" mention of the fact that "the actual difference between the average amount of nicotine in an Old Gold and in two other brands was one-177,000th of an ounce. By switching to Old Golds, the addict who smokes 20 cigarets a day will subject his system to only one-24th of an ounce less nicotine in a year." The Digest points out that Old Gold produces the 10-c--a-pack Sensations, which are advertised: "You can't buy better smoking pleasure at any price!"

> Philip Morris Co.'s ads stress that its cigarets cause less "throat irritation" than any other brand. According to FTC, the "scientific tests" on which this claim is based were inaccurate, and when smokers change to Philip Morris nose and throat irritation due to smoking is not cleared up.

FTC has filed no complaints against Liggett & Myers Co. (Chesterfields), which by & large confines its advertising to claims that "they satisfy."

All four accused firms have denied FTC's charges.

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