Editorial: Selling cancer sticks

Friday, June 3, 2005 | 9 a.m.

We have known for decades that tobacco companies went to extraordinary lengths in their advertising to sell cigarettes. Powerful advertising images have included the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel, a cartoon character that notoriously was aimed at children. Tobacco companies also attracted women by using advertising that linked smoking with glamour and beauty. The companies hoped that once people were enticed to try smoking they would be addicted until their deaths, which often were brought about by the ravages of smoking-related emphysema or cancer.

A new study by Harvard University's School of Public Health adds to our knowledge about just how far tobacco companies went to turn people into cigarette junkies -- and it didn't stop at advertising. The Harvard research team combed through more than 7 million tobacco industry documents -- which had been made public by the 1998 settlement between the states and tobacco companies -- and found that cigarettes were altered to appeal to women's desires to be healthy and thin.

A 1987 internal report from Philip Morris praised modifying cigarettes to make them longer and slimmer, offering the false promise that it was a "healthier" product. "Most smokers have little notion of their brand's tar and nicotine levels," the Philip Morris report said. "Perception is more important than reality, and in this case the perception is of reduced tobacco consumption." The R.J. Reynolds Co. even considered creating a chocolate-flavored cigarette that would suppress a woman's appetite.

In light of the millions of shortened lives and deaths associated with smoking, coupled with the tobacco companies' knowledge of its harmful effects, it is sickening that tobacco executives aren't sitting in prison cells instead of collecting multimillion-dollar salaries.

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