Business Notes NEW PRODUCTS

Puffers around the U.S. were intrigued last year when the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company disclosed that it had developed a virtually smokeless cigarette. Now cigarette users can decide whether the product is like the real thing. Last week Reynolds said that beginning Oct. 1 it will test-market its new brand, Premier, in St. Louis, Phoenix and Tucson. The user lights Premier like a regular cigarette, but a carbon element at its tip warms the enclosed tobacco and flavorings rather than burns them.

Even though Premier generates less smoke, it has provoked plenty of fire. Health activists, charging that RJR's Premier is not a tobacco product but a device that introduces the drug nicotine into the body, have urged the Food and Drug Administration to regulate Reynolds' invention just like any new drug. The Government will decide in December whether Premier's packaging must bear the Surgeon General's warning. Smokers may be put off by Premier's price: 30 cents more a pack than regular brands.