The Unfinished Filter

Just eight months after proudly announcing its support of the Strickman cigarette filter--for which it received a major financial interest in return--Columbia University last week did an embarrassed about-face. Acting at the request of the inventor, New Jersey Chemist Robert L. Strickman, who felt that the university was dragging its feet on the product, Columbia backed out of the deal. The university said that it had made "a well-intentioned mistake in entering a highly controversial and competitive commercial field." It had indeed, suggested Washington's Democratic Senator Warren Magnuson. The outspoken tobacco industry foe charged that Strickman's secret polymer device was "not as efficient" as "some filters now in production."

Did that finish the filter? Far from it. Strickman supporters insisted that Magnuson had misinterpreted a Columbia-sponsored test that, in fact, showed the invention to be more effective in eliminating tar and nicotine than the cellulose acetate filters used on the most widely smoked filter cigarettes. Not only are some U.S. cigarette makers continuing to express interest in the filter, but last week both Imperial Tobacco Co. of Canada Ltd. (du Maurier and Player's), and Rothmans of Pall Mall Canada Ltd., negotiated licenses to use the filter. The companies are two of the biggest in Canada, and they could conceivably be marketing Strickman-filtered cigarettes as early as next fall.

Chief Beneficiary. Before that happens, however, further research on the filter will be performed. Though Strickman's device may be more effective than the cellulose acetate variety, there are other filters already on the market --including those on such cigarettes as Marvels and Cascades--that probably rival it in reducing tar and nicotine. But most such brands have enjoyed only moderate success among smokers, many of whom feel that the filters diminish taste and make it harder to "draw." While the Strickman filter may likewise be hard on the draw, a consumer study for Strickman by Market Analyst Virginia Miles suggests that it has very possibly solved the taste problem.

If the Canadian manufacturers go ahead with the filter, they will pay a penny a pack in royalties to a new charitable foundation established by Strickman and headed by Robert A. Katz, secretary and counsel of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons Inc. Besides advance payments of $200,000 apiece, royalties from the two companies could eventually amount to $5,000,000 a year. And because Strickman refuses to grant exclusive licenses, the foundation could still hope to reap far bigger returns from any--or all--of the leading U.S. cigarette companies. Even Columbia would not be left out in the cold. Though the university formally severed all ties with the filter, Strickman nonetheless designated its medical school as the foundation's chief beneficiary.

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