Under Fire from All Sides

By John E. Gallagher

Even for an industry accustomed to constant attack, cigarette makers suffered a barrage of unusual intensity last week. The torrent of criticism suggested that the U.S. tobacco business will be severely hobbled in its attempts to introduce new brands and sustain its dwindling market:

-- For the second time in a month, plans by R.J. Reynolds to pitch a new brand to a particular group of smokers met with fiery opposition from health groups.

-- During Senate hearings in which he proposed a new regulatory group to clamp down on tobacco, Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy pointed out that % cigarettes have almost 2,000 times as much benzene, among other toxins, as the Perrier water recently recalled for contamination.

-- Louis Sullivan, Secretary of Health and Human Services, charged that smoking costs the nation $52 billion a year. Said he: "Cigarettes are the only legal product that when used as intended cause death."

-- A smoking ban on all domestic flights in the continental U.S. went into effect, while state and local officials announced more antismoking initiatives.

No company is more aware of which way the smoke is blowing than RJR. Last month it gave in to protest and dropped its plans for a cigarette for blacks called Uptown. Now RJR is mired in criticism over its intention to test-market a new cigarette called Dakota. The controversy began when an antismoking group, the Advocacy Institute, released copies of a marketing plan for Dakota that had been leaked to the institute. The documents, which call the cigarette Project VF, for virile female, describe the typical customer as an entry-level factory worker, 18 to 20 years old, who enjoys watching drag races and aspires "to get married in her early 20s and have a family."

While RJR dismissed the documents as spurious and inaccurate, health experts and women's groups accused RJR of targeting uninformed young women for death. Lung cancer among women has jumped more than fivefold in the past 20 years, and now surpasses breast cancer as the leading cause of death. "I cannot understand how any self-respecting company could seek to exploit so deliberately a group of young women," said Molly Yard, president of the National Organization for Women. Despite the furor, RJR is going ahead with plans to test Dakota.

Until recently, new tobacco brands met little resistance. But target marketing has taken on an odious reputation as tobacco makers aim for the few groups that have been slow to kick the habit. The companies have long argued that they are selling a legal product to consumers capable of making their own choices, but as cigarette makers focus on younger and less-educated consumers, that argument becomes harder to support.

RJR's reported strategy for Dakota heightened concerns that tobacco companies are trying to indoctrinate children and recruit minors. Half of all current smokers first lighted up by age 15, some 90% before they were 19. Some critics believe the industry is deliberately capitalizing on adolescents' desires to be popular and attractive by attributing those qualities to smoking / in its $2.5 billion annual ad spending. "You certainly don't see ads featuring 65-year-olds," notes Karl Bauman, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health. Thomas Lauria of the Tobacco Institute, the industry's lobbying arm, disagrees: "Advertising doesn't get people to smoke. High school kids haven't seen ads for marijuana."

Other forms of marketing are taking flak as well. In his second antismoking salvo of the week, Sullivan denounced tobacco sponsorship of sporting events, notably Virginia Slims tennis tournaments, for using "the prestige and the image of the athlete" to tempt young people to light up. Mark Green's first official act as New York City's Commissioner of Consumer Affairs was to fire off a letter last week to Louis Gerstner, chairman of RJR Nabisco, the cigarette maker's parent company, criticizing the use of a cartoon character in Camel ads. "Isn't this ad campaign an obvious attempt to lure children into smoking?" Green wrote. Meanwhile, New York Governor Mario Cuomo said he would back a bill to ban most cigarette-vending machines because they make state law prohibiting sales to minors "largely unenforceable."

A prime reason for the flurry of regulation is that cigarette bashing has become politically popular. Even such a tobacco bastion as Greensboro, N.C., has an ordinance against smoking in retail stores and other public areas. As a sign of the diminished power of Washington's once feared tobacco lobby, Congress is considering 72 bills to inhibit tobacco use. Kennedy's proposal would create a $185 million Center for Tobacco Products, with broad powers to regulate the industry. His costly plan faces an uphill battle, as does another bill, proposed by Congressman Henry Waxman of California, that would allow only informational ads without pictures. Ironically, such ads are known in the trade as tombstones.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: NO CREDIT

CAPTION: STUBBING OUT

% of 20-to-24-year-olds who smoke

With reporting by John F. McDonald/Washington and Don Winbush/Atlanta