Addiction radio looks at recent tobacco news includes new forms of chewing tobacco (snoose), new rules since the FDA took control of regulating tobacco, and the banning of flavored cigarettes, and the history of modern cigarettes and the freebasing of nicotine.
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Free-Base Nicotine
During the early 1990s, I like almost everyone else was outraged by the stance of the tobacco industry and their supposedly expert health professionals who maintained that nicotine was harmless and absolutely non-addictive. They hung fast to these claims despite the overwhelming body of scientific evidence demonstrating the exact opposite. I have strong memories of the televised legislative hearings where tobacco industry experts and executives testified under oath that in their opinion, nicotine was non-addictive. At that time, investigators were looking into rumors that the tobacco industry had begun to artificially spike or add nicotine to their cigarettes to boost the tobacco content of the substance. Many asked why, If nicotine was non-addictive, would there be any need to add more of it to cigarettes. While all this was taking place, Dr. Stanton Glantz at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF) received a packet containing some 4,000 pages of Brown & Williamsons research papers and executive memos regarding the addictive nature and hazards of cigarettes dating back several decades. Stan quickly began to make this information available to the general public which brought on an immediate attack by tobacco industry lawyers who tried to claim that he had obtained the information illegally and that the material was the private and exclusive property of Brown & Williams. Threats of lawsuits against Dr. Glantz and UCSF were made to cease and desist the public distribution of the very revealing information contained in the packet. I have never been more proud of my alma mater when USCF persisted in their right to inform the public about the true nature of nicotine. This resulted in more outrage and increased public awareness of the outlandish steps employed by the tobacco industry in their effective efforts to addict as many people as they could to nicotine so as to maintain their annual growth in profits.
As infuriated as I was regarding the investigative discoveries made about the actions and intent of the tobacco industry during the 1990s, it pales in comparison to how livid I am regarding the information on free-base nicotine contained in their internal documents made public through the Tobacco Settlement Act of 1999. And, this is only a small portion of the nefarious practices documented in Michael Rabinoffs excellent book, Ending the Tobacco Holocaust: How the Tobacco Industry Affects Your Health (Elite Books: Fullerton, CA, 2007). Rabinoffs book fully validates the Pulitzer Prize winning national report published in the Wall Street Journal on December 28, 1995 by Alix M. Freedman: Impact Booster: Tobacco firm shows how ammonia spurs delivery of nicotine Brown & Williamson papers claim wide industry use of additive in cigarettes. Both Robinoff and Freedman document a fascinating if not enraging long saga of the tobacco industrys use of ammonia technology to increase the addicting effects of nicotine in cigarette smoke. Freedmans report was made possible by confidential reports obtained by the Wall Street Journal in 1995. Rabinoffs book reviews documents obtained by through the Tobacco Settlement Act of 1999. Prior to these publications, tobacco companies claimed that ammonium-releasing chemicals were added to cigarettes merely to enhance flavor/taste, increase impact, improve body, boost smoker satisfaction, or to reduce irritation. Attachment to cigarettes was explained merely as brand loyalty. Typical of what has been learned about tobacco industry practices, they have long known nicotine to be addictive, have endeavored to make it more so, get more people hooked and have effectively waged a campaign to mislead and confuse the public about health hazards of cigarettes for many decades.
Nicotine usually exists as an acid salt form in tobacco (i.e. nicotine hydrochloride) analogous to cocaine in its powder form actually being the acid salt form of that substance (cocaine hydrochloride). Free-base nicotine is nicotine that is free of its acid complex analogous to free-base cocaine (crack cocaine). The free-base form of these alkaloids are more readily vaporized to their gaseous states, cross the blood-brain barrier more rapidly, and provide a quicker more addictive hit to the brain than their acid salt form. Thus, free-base nicotine is more physiologically active and addictive than nicotine hydrochloride.
Ammonia technology is the use of ammonium compounds to increase the alkalinity (pH) of tobacco which causes the acidic complex of nicotine to separate from it resulting in free-base nicotine. This is accomplished by adding a substance like diammonium phosphate (DAP) to tobacco. When smoked, the high pH of the DAP treated tobacco and the smoke it produces changes nicotine hydrochloride to the more addictive free-base nicotine. Ammonium is also added to the cigarette paper to help maintain the higher pH of the smoke and also to slow the burning process.
I had always thought free-base cocaine that caused the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s resulted from an accidental discovery that free-base cocaine is more powerful and addictive than the powder or cocaine hydrochloride form of that drug. It had been projected that a street chemists attempt to separate the various diluents (sugars, talc, any white powder) in street powder cocaine to purify it for smoking resulted in the basing technique and the discovery that smoking crack was a lot more powerful than smoking or snorting powder cocaine. After reviewing the history of free-base nicotine, I now wonder if it could have been a tobacco industry insider that leaked this understanding and technology to the illicit cocaine market.
Philip Morris was the nations smallest cigarette maker when it, in an attempt to increase their profits, began to produce cigarettes made from reconstituted tobacco consisting of stems, dust and broken leaf tobacco leftovers called bandcast in the early 1950s. The tobacco company also relaunched its Marlboro brand in a red and white box with cowboys and other macho advertising images in 1954. The new bandcast tobacco filler was said to fall apart during processing leading to the addition of DAP by the 1960s. This ammonium compound was said hold the bandcast together. Philip Morris documents also state the addition of DAP improves Marlboros taste or flavor and served as an impact booster and a satisfaction promoter. The Marlboro Man advertising campaign was initiated in 1963 about the same time that DAP was added to its bandcast tobacco filler. Whether the ammonium technology of adding DAP to its bandcast was by accident or design, explosive growth of Marlboro sales resulted. By 1991 this one brand cigarettes captured a 30% share of the US cigarette market. By 2006, Philip Morris brands controlled about half of all US cigarette sales and its Marlboro brand cornered 50% of smoking by children and underage teens surveyed in the US.
Review of some documents obtained through the Tobacco Settlement Act of 1999 presented in, Ending the Tobacco Holocaust: How the Tobacco Industry Affects Your Health clearly show that other tobacco companies immediately began to gather information on Phillip Morris and their Marlboro production processes. These documents bear witness to the fact that the tobacco industry was indeed knowledgeable about free-base nicotine as early as the 1960s and maybe even earlier. They were also aware of the increased addictive effects of this substance and how they could increase its concentration in cigarette smoke. Most distressing, the documents also infer that many companies then endeavored to increase the free-base nicotine content in their cigarette smoke while they conspired to fool the public by lowering the overall nicotine content of their cigarettes so to promote an image of being responsive to the growing health concerns about nicotine. The documents show that the tobacco industry had the technology to keep the same or even produce greater nicotine impact while lowering the total nicotine content of cigarettes by converting more of the remaining nicotine to its free-base form.
Sample comments of tobacco companies reference to free-base nicotine presented in Michael Rabinoffs fascinating book consist of the following – remember that the tobacco industry persisted in their claim that nicotine was non-addictive through the 1990s:
British American Tobacco Company
1964:
it is almost certain that the free nicotine base is absorbed faster into the bloodstream.
1965: The results show that ammonia treatment caused a general increase in delivery of bases including a 29% increase in nicotine. This result despite a decrease in nicotine content and a 10% drop in the weight of tobacco burnt in puffing is only partially due to a small decrease in nicotine filtration. In other words, the nicotine transfer has increased as a result of ammonia treatment.
1966: It would appear that the increased smoker response is associated with nicotine reaching the brain more quickly On this basis, it appears reasonable to assume that the increased response of a smoker to the smoke with a higher amount of extractable nicotine (not synonymous with but similar to freebase nicotine) may be either because this nicotine reaches the brain in a different chemical form or because it reaches the brain more quickly.
1988: When a cigarette is smoked, nicotine is released momentarily in the free-form. In this form, nicotine is more readily absorbed through body tissue. Hence it is free nicotine which is associated with IMPACT, i.e., The higher the free nicotine, the higher the IMPACT.
Philip Morris
1969: W.L. Dunn memo, Do we really want to tout cigarette smoke as a drug? It is, of course, but there are dangerous implications to having such conceptualization go beyond these walls.
1972: W.L. Dunn memo, Think of the cigarette pack as a storage container for a days supply of nicotine Think of the cigarette as a dispenser for a dose unit of nicotine Think of a puff of smoke as the vehicle of nicotine
RJ Reynolds
1966: Launched an internal study on Philip Morris Marlboro success.
1973: If our data, correlations and conclusions are valid, then what has emerged is a rather new type of cigarette, represented by Marlboro and Kool, with high nicotine kick, burley flavour, mildness to the mouth, and increased sensation to the throat, all largely the result of higher smoke pH. There is evidence that other brands, which are selling well also, have some of these attributes, particularly increased free nicotine impact.
Since the unbound nicotine is very much more active physiologically and much faster acting than the bound nicotine, the smoke at a high pH seems to be strong nicotine. Therefore, the amount of free nicotine in the smoke may be used for at least a partial measure of the physiological strength of the cigarette.
In essence, a cigarette is a system for delivery of nicotine to the smoker in attractive, useful form. At normal smoke pH, at or below about 6.0, essentially all of the smoke nicotine is chemically combined with acidic substance hence is nonvolatile and relatively slowly absorbed by the smoker. As the pH increases above about 6.0, an increasing proportion of the total smoke nicotine occurs in free form, which is volatile, rapidly absorbed by the smoker, and believed to be instantly perceived as nicotine kick.
As a result of its higher smoke pH, the current Marlboro, despite a two-thirds reduction in smoke tar and nicotine over the years, calculates to have essentially the same amount of free nicotine in its smoke as did the early Winston.
Our data show that smoke from our brands, and all other significant competitive brands, in recent years has been consistently and significantly lower in pH (less alkaline) than in smoke from Marlboro and to a lesser degree Kool All evidence indicates that the relatively high smoke pH (high alkalinity) shown by Marlboro (and other Philip Morris brands) and Kool is deliberate and controlled. This has raised questions as to: (1) the effect of high pH on nicotine impact and smoke quality, hence market performance, and (2) how the high smoke pH might be accomplished.
1976: The pH also relates to the immediacy of the nicotine impact. As the pH increases, the nicotine changes its chemical form so that it is more rapidly absorbed by the body and more quickly gives a kick to the smoker
In summary, the various documents show RJ Reynolds had learned by the early 1970s that the use of ammonia technology to increase the pH in tobacco results in increase free-base nicotine and this directly correlates with increased sales. They also discovered that increased pH distorts the measurement of tar in cigarettes to give lower readings than would actually be inhaled by the smoker.
Liggett
1971: increasing the pH of a medium in which nicotine is delivered increases the physiological effect of the nicotine by increasing the ratio of free base to acid salt form, the freebase form being more readily transported across physiological membranes, We are pursuing this project with the eventual goal of lowering the total nicotine present in smoke while increasing the physiological effect of the nicotine which is present, so that no physiological effect is lost on nicotine reduction.
1974: The purpose of this project is to develop a method for increasing the smoke pH of a cigarette. A low smoke solids, low nicotine cigarette with an increased smoke pH would then have relatively more free nicotine in its smoke, and consequently, a higher nicotine impact.
Lorillard
1973: The smoke pH for Kool and Marlboro are 7.12 and 6.98, respectively confirming the relationship between high smoke pH and cigarette sales increase.
Brown & Williamson
1980: It appears that we have sufficient expertise available to build a lowered mg. tar cigarette which will deliver as much free nicotine as a Marlboro, Winston or Kent without increasing the total nicotine delivery above that of a light product. There are products already being marketed which deliver high percentage free nicotine levels in smoke, i.e. Merit, Now.
1992: What product technology, then, makes Marlboro a Marlboro? Looking at all the technology employed in Marlboro on a worldwide basis, ammonia technology remains the key factor.
Rabinoff exposes many other deceitful practices used by the tobacco industry to perpetuate smoking that are revealed in documents he reviewed for his book. Many are just as captivating and hideous as the free-base nicotine saga.
In addition to free-base nicotine, Philip Morris also worked to decrease nicotine particle size in cigarettes to increase its absorption in the lungs. They also added acetaldehyde to their bandcast because they found it to be synergistic with nicotines addictive effects.
Brown & Williamson cultivated Y-1, fumo louco tobacco in Brazil to genetically enhancing the nicotine content of tobacco. This form of tobacco has twice the nicotine as regular strains of the plant. They tried to conceal their development of this plant but the FDA discovered US Customs import invoices for 500,000 lbs of this substance in 1993 forcing the tobacco company to admit to their work developing fumo louco.
Various companies began to use reconstituted tobacco bandcast that were spiked with nicotine and filled with hundreds of additives. They then began to experiment with Elastic cigarettes which were engineered so that the harder the smoker puffs, the higher the nicotine content of the puff. The tobacco industry also developed freeze-dried tobacco. When tobacco is freeze-dried it expands and a cigarette can be filled with only half its unprocessed weight. The cigarette can then be supplemented with more additives.
Those interested in more details and more horror stories regarding the activities of the tobacco industry are referred to Alex Freedmans Pulitzer Prize winning national report in the Wall Street Journal of December 28, 1995 and especially to Michael Rabinoffs new book, Ending the Tobacco Holocaust.
Darryl S. Inaba, PharmD., CADC III