sample="rhetorical" bates="2076792272" isource="pm" decade="1990" class="ui" date="19940307" Contact: Victor Han (212) 878-2796 NEW YORK, March 7 -- Philip Morris Statement regarding ABC's Day One coverage on nicotine and cigarette ingredients. Both this week and last, Philip Morris and other tobacco industry members provided Day One with the facts well in advance of stories the program intended to air about cigarettes. Last week, industry members set the record straight about nicotine. Nevertheless, Day One chose to repeat its false allegations in tonight's program. This week the industry sent the attached letter clarifying the matter of cigarette ingredients prior to tonight's program. In both instances, Day One disregarded the facts and chose instead to air inaccurate and misleading programs without referring to or acknowledging its receipt of the information. Highlights of the letter that was delivered to Day One prior to last night's program included the following: Cigarette manufacturers have furnished ingredient information to the Department of Health and Human Services for more than a decade. HHS has given no indicate that its review of cigarette ingredients has created any basis for concern. The manufacturers repeatedly have offered to make their scientists available to meet with HHS to consider any issues relating to cigarette ingredients. Cigarette manufacturers have provided additional information, not required by the law, on several occasions when HHS has asked them to do so. Rep. Mike Synar, who claimed credit for "hammering out" the language of the 1984 law praised the law as "the best example we have had in a long time of where honest negotiation and reasonable compromise can mean that we can have meaningful legislation for this country." The confidential treatment of cigarette ingredients by Congress in the 1984 law is consistent with the treatment by Congress, the Food and Drug Administration and other federal agencies of ingredients used in other consumer products. Given this information, it is unconscionable that Day One chose to mislead the public yet again this week given that the facts tell a completely different story.