
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 13, 1994                   TAG: 9405140004
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Short

TOBACCO FIRM PATENTED SAFER SMOKE IN '66

A tobacco company had developed a critical step for making cigarettes safer in the early 1960s but shelved it for fear it would make their other products look bad, The New York Times reports today.

The step was to heat the tobacco rather than burn it, thus avoiding the process that creates most of the hazardous substances in tobacco smoke, the Times reported.

The Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., a subsidiary of the London-based British-American Tobacco PLC, put the idea to the test in a cigarette, code-named Ariel, that was granted a patent in 1966 but never marketed, the Times said, citing internal company documents. The company decided against pressing safer products toward the market for fear that they would make their other products look bad, according to documents and interviews with scientists working on the projects. The documents also suggest the cigarettes were held back because smokers might have found them less satisfying and would not buy them, the Times said.

Thomas Fitzgerald, a spokesman for Brown & Williamson, told the Times: ``From the description given to us, it appears you are basing your article on attorney-client privileged documents that were stolen by a former employee of a law firm that worked for Brown & Williamson. Anybody who knowingly uses stolen information is in fact contributing to an illegal act. We have no further comment.''

The documents indicate the Ariel cigarette would have cut down greatly on the cancer-causing substances in cigarette smoke and cut down the amount of secondhand smoke coming from the cigarette.

by CNB