Business: THOSE CIGARETTE CLAIMS

No One Knows Which Filter Filters Best

FROM United States Tobacco Co. came an announcement this week that it has changed the filter and tobacco of its King Sano brand so that the smoke now carries “26% less tar than any other cigarette.” Of ten major brands in fierce competition for the filter-cigarette business, five claim that their filters filter best—and each backs its claim with an impressive array of tests. The argument over which to believe has interested the Federal Trade Commission and Congress. Says Congressman John A. Blatnik, chairman of a House subcommittee that investigated cigarette advertising: “There are so many claims and counterclaims that we just do not know how much tar and nicotine is involved.”

The problem is important because filters are largely responsible for the new boom in cigarettes. After a sharp dip in 1953-54, when medical tests indicating a cancer-cigarette link were widely publicized, sales have come back to hit a new record this year (see chart). Smokers worried about tar and nicotine pushed filters, with their “thousands of filter traps,” to 38.5% of the market last year, will increase the percentage to 45% of a market that promises to top $5 billion in 1958.

Much confusion—and a good reason why every company can claim perfection—arises from the fact that cigarette testing is still an inexact science. There is no uniform standard on how many cigarettes need be sampled, which automatic smoking machines to use, how strong, long or frequent the puffs should be, how to trap the hundreds of different substances lumped together as “tar.” Result: each company naturally uses whatever tests serve it best.

Machines draw on cigarettes less frequently, often smoke less tobacco than a fast-puffing, heavy smoker—just the man who needs protection most. King Sano’s test smokes little more than half the cigarette’s 85-mm. length, also measures only that amount of tar which dissolves in chloroform, misses a lot. The Foster D. Snell labs, which test for Reader’s Digest, told the Blatnik subcommittee that the chloroform extraction method measures only 69% of the tar in smoke. On the other hand, Snell tests only 45 cigarettes of each brand (v. 100 to 200 per brand in some other tests), which competitors say are too few for statistical accuracy.

Philip Morris (Parliament, Marlboro) and Lorillard (Kent, Old Gold) test all cigarettes down to a bare inch of butt. Other companies criticize this system because it produces higher tar yields for longer cigarettes. Another argument rages over what to report. American Tobacco measures “total solids” in smoke. Competitors have found that “solids” include tar, nicotine and some moisture; thus the advantage goes to American Tobacco’s Hit Parade brand, whose tissue-paper-like filter absorbs more moisture than competing cellulose acetate filters. Hit Parade also claims “over 400,000 filter traps”; Lorillard says it could claim millions of traps for its fast-rising Kent but does not, holding that the number of traps means nothing.

What is obviously needed is a single, standard test for all cigarettes that will blow away the smoke screen of conflicting claims. To develop one, the Federal Trade Commission recently sent unbranded cigarette samples to six cigarette companies and four independent laboratories, asked them to use a test similar to the American Tobacco method that measures “total solids.” Preliminary results vary about 5% from lab to lab, and much work needs to be done. The FTC hopes to iron out the difficulties within the next six months. But before it can enforce a standard test, it must win permission from the courts or Congress.

Congressman Blatnik has introduced such a bill. He not only wants a standard test but also wants results published in much the same fashion as food companies list ingredients on their labels. Tobaccomen may be reluctant to scrap their own systems. But the idea will get plenty of support from U.S. smokers, who want to know which brands give them, as P. Lorillard & Co.’s President Lewis Gruber says, “less of the things they have been smoking filters to get less of.”