Here in Neuchâtel one of the major employers is a certain cigarette company, and every time the big Red & White wallet opens in support of some event or charity the local press writes fawning articles about the multinational’s generosity. However, big tobacco doesn’t get it all their own way; a recent study from Lausanne University Hospital and OxyRomandie, which reports some pretty cynical manipulations by the tobacco industry, has been getting some exposure in the popular press. The study is ‘The tobacco industry’s past role in weight control related to smoking’ (Semira Gonseth, Isabelle Jacot-Sadowski, Pascal A. Diethelm, Vincent Barras, Jacques Cornuz, in ‘The European Journal of Public Health’ 2011, http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/04/07/eurpub.ckr023.full.pdf+html).
The authors looked through the archives of six major tobacco companies to answer the question:
‘Did the tobacco industry try to take advantage of the relationships between body weight, appetite, smoking and smoking cessation? Did it go as far as modifying its products to obtain such advantages?’
The atudy makes rather chilling reading, illustrating the extent to which the tobacco industry is willing to use any means possible to sell its products. In effect, if you can sell cigarettes as a weight lose or weight control product, so much the better. If you need to modify the product to enhances these effects, well ‘OK’.
The authors describea rather clumsy attempt at this in the form of a Trims cigarette in which
‘This new longer length cigarette actually contains an appetite depressant to keep you looking and feeling as slim and trim as your cigarette’.
This particular line was stopped by the FDA in 1977 since the modified tobacco was not considered as a cigarette, but as a drug. The authors suggest that the tobacco industry leant a lesson from this, as is shown by a quote from a Philip Morris memorandum of 1969 which explains why it is not necessary to declare which additives are put into cigarettes:
‘In the response to Roger’s [Fagan] question concerning FDA requirements on the introduction of a substance into cigarettes, I told him that the FDA had no requirements until a health claim is made. Then there must be studies on safety, efficacy, mechanism of action, metabolism, etc. If a substance is simply added to a product and no claims are made there is no need for FDA approval’.
The authors correctly point out a limitation in their work stemming from the incomplete nature of the archives that acted as their source. These archives where released as part of the 1998 ‘Master Settlement Agreement’ between US tobacco industry and 46 States, where US tobacco companies made their internal documents available on the Internet. Obviously since 1989 the tobacco industry has been rather careful about leaving written traces of compromising actives.
Just from my own, rather quick, reading of the study I found rather unclear the extent of appetite depressants use and if they are still to be found in cigarettes. To quote again from the article ‘PM put during the 1960s a substance containing tartaric acid into its cigarette in order to reduce smokers’ appetite. Tartaric acid was considered as an appetite suppressant and removed from the market in 1977 by a decision of a US court. This substance was also added to BAT cigarettes, although we did not find at which date, and if it is still the case.’
This makes me wonder the extent to which the following statement from the articles Discussion section is really supported by the presented evidence:
‘Our findings must help smokers and the health-care community to understand at least partially why cigarette smoking is producing the effect of reducing appetite, and could explain in part why smokers weigh in general less than non-smokers. Although little is known in the medical literature about the anti-appetite effect of the above cited substances, we can make the hypothesis that the weight gain following smoking cessation could be a ‘rebound effect’ of discontinuation of the daily consumption of an antiappetite substance through cigarette smoking, as it is known for the use of other anti-appetite substances’
For all that, I think that the authors present a convincing case and that their final conclusion is both well supported and worth repeating:
‘We found clear evidence that every one of the six US and UK tobacco companies elaborated the idea to put appetite depressants molecule inside cigarettes to enhance this effect. They all investigated various substances for such a use. At least two of them, PM and BAT has actually modified its products to affect appetite and body weight.’