sample="supplemental" bates="504306626" isource="rjr" decade="1980" class="ue" date="19840101" In an effort to foster a balanced, objective public discussion of smoking questions, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company has begun a series of advertisements addressing many of the key issues surrounding the use of tobacco. Through the years, the public has received a largely one-sided view of the questions that have arisen about tobacco. We believe the public not only has a right to hear, but wants to hear the other side. We believe that by not speaking out more frequently over the years, we have led people to believe we have nothing to say, and that is not the case. Through this program, we hope to substitute rational discussion for the emotionalism currently surrounding smoking. We recognize that some of our messages will be controversial, and that it will be hard to overcome years of one-sided communications. But we also have confidence in the ability of people to reason after they have been presented with all points of view. E.A. Horrigan Jr. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Chairman of the Board In the last three decades, a number of questions have been raised regarding the use of tobacco products. Too often the public has not had the benefit of all points of view on these issues. Now, through a series of advertisements appearing in national newspapers and magazines, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company is attempting to provide its side of such issues as youth smoking, passive smoking, smoking courtesy and smoking and health. NEED TO COMMUNICATE The question of smoking by youth is an example of the need for the company to communicate its positions. Some anti-smoking activists have attempted to make the public believe R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company encourages smoking by young people. The truth is that the company's long-standing position has been that smoking is an adult custom and that it does not believe young people should smoke. There is also need for further understanding of the company's views on other smoking issues. For instance, there are statistical studies that have led some to claim that smoking causes some diseases. There are other, less widely known studies that question these claims. The unfortunate fact is that scientists do not know the causes of diseases statistically linked to smoking. The tobacco industry, government health agencies and private health agencies have funded smoking and health research for 30 years. After all of this study, there are many scientists who believe there is no established laboratory or clinical proof that cigarette smoke does - or does not - cause disease. There are, however, numerous questions that need to be answered. This can best be done through continued objective scientific research into the causes of the diseases statistically linked to smoking. During the last three decades, R.J. Reynolds and the tobacco industry have spent more than $110 million in support of independent clinical research at many leading medical institutions, searching for answers to smoking and health questions. And the industry continues to spend more for such research each year than all of the private health agencies combined. The company believes that reasonable people who examine all the evidence concerning smoking and disease would agree this is still an open scientific controversy, not a closed case. NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF The case against smoking has been primarily based on statistical studies, not on scientifically established proof of cause. In an unbiased scientific approach, a statistical correlation is regarded as a clue pointing the way for more investigation. It is not accepted as proof for rendering a judgment of cause. These statistical associations do raise questions that must be answered. That is why the tobacco industry has funded so much independent research at such institutions as Harvard University, the University of California at Los Angeles, Washington University and other top centers of scientific research. In too many instances people who come to casual conclusions from statistical studies ignore scientific evidence to the contrary. An example of a major clinical study that failed to support statistical conclusions of cause was a federally funded Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial study reported in 1982. Statistical studies have been used by some researchers to conclude that high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and smoking habits lead to high risk of heart disease. However, the federal study, lasting 10 years and costing $115 million, failed to show that reducing these factors reduced the risk of heart disease. There are also cases in which the public does not get to hear all of the available evidence. In 1980 the National Cancer Institute decided to terminate a study in which beagles had been made to inhale fresh, whole cigarette smoke daily for several years. According to a government spokesperson, it was obvious to the scientists that the dogs were not developing cancer. Four years later, those findings have yet to be published. PUBLIC CONFUSION There is also public confusion on other tobacco issues. There has been a great deal of overreaction on the issue of smoking in public places. An objective look at all of the evidence available would, the company believes, clearly show a reasonable person there is no reliable scientific proof that cigarette smoke causes disease in nonsmokers. In fact, the weight of the evidence is that it does not. The lack of evidence that smoke has a harmful effect on nonsmokers has been noted by some of smoking's harshest critics. Dr. Lawrence Garfinkel of the American Cancer Society, the organization's chief statistician, published a study in 1981 covering more than 150,000 people. In it he concluded that passive smoking has virtually no effect on lung cancer rates among nonsmokers. In a later statement, he also said that "passive smoking may be a political matter, but it is not a main issue in terms of health policy." Dr. Edwin Brandt, United States assistant secretary for health, recently said that the evidence on secondhand smoke was "Not conclusive by any stretch of the imagination." A scientific study by the Harvard School of Public Health, conducted in a number of locations, reported that a nonsmoker might inhale anywhere between 1/1000th and 1/100th of the smoke of one filter cigarette per hour. At that rate, it would take at least four days to inhale the equivalent of the smoke from a single cigarette. Despite statements and studies like this, some anti-smokers are attempting to make smokers social outcasts, second-class citizens. While smokers have an obligation to use good sense and common courtesy when smoking in public, anti-smokers sometimes resort to such tactics as shoving fans and spraying aerosols in the faces of smokers. Smokers are also subject to local and state regulation of their freedoms. Things have clearly reached a point beyond reason. Smokers and nonsmokers can work out their relationships with each other through mutual cooperation and consideration without legislative interference. But in too many cases, they are not allowed the opportunity. In a 1983 referendum, a proposed San Francisco ordinance that would require employers to take extensive steps to segregate smokers and nonsmokers passed by less than one-half of 1 percent of all votes cast. The ordinance permits one nonsmoker in an office of 100 people to demand that the entire office be declared a non-smoking area. CAB PROPOSALS EXCESSIVE Another example of overreaction to pressure from anti-smokers was the Civil Aeronautics Board consideration of a smoking ban on flights of two hours or less or possibly even one hour or less. Further, the CAB proposal also called for a prohibition of smoking in some smaller commercial aircraft. A survey of 60 airports conducted by The Tobacco Institute found that 94 percent of all flights are for less than two hours. A recent study of the amount of nicotine absorbed by nonsmoking airline flight attendants on transoceanic flights suggests that such restrictions would be unnecessary based on any concern for health. Reporting on his study in the New England Journal of Medicine, N.L. Benowitz, M.D., said that the quantity of nicotine consumed was "relatively small," and that the concentrations achieved would be "unlikely to have any physiologic effects" on nonsmokers. Further, the public is not clamoring for changes in airlines' smoking policies. Surveys have shown that more than 83 percent of those taking two or more airplane trips annually are satisfied with existing smoking policies. More than 170,000 people signed petitions against the proposed changes and more than 70 percent of the mail received by the CAB was against the proposals. The fact that public opinion was against the CAB proposals is encouraging, but the point is that such regulations should never have been considered in the first place. They came about due to pressure from one small, but highly vocal, group of anti-smoking activists who went so far as to take the issue to court. However, the public only sees that the CAB seems to be taking a stand against smoking. This is the type of situation R.J. Reynolds Tobacco is attempting to change with its series of advertisements. The questions about tobacco use can only be answered through open, factual debate and unbiased research. With its new informational program, R.J. Reynolds is working to create an environment in which both can take place. An Open Debate