Activists wary of 'low-harm' cigarettes

By David Wroe, Canberra       

The Age, Melbourne, March 24, 2005

Quit Victoria warns that new smokes could be a tobacco company's ploy to keep smokers hooked.

Tobacco giant Philip Morris hopes to trial "low-harm" cigarettes, which it says will expose smokers to fewer dangerous chemicals, by the end of the year.

The firm's senior vice-president for corporate affairs, David Davies, said yesterday people would always smoke and governments need to think about harm reduction instead of focusing solely on cutting smoking rates.

The "low-harm" cigarettes would use advanced methods of filtration and burn at lower temperatures to cut the number and concentration of harmful chemicals in the smoke.

"Our scientific work is at a very advanced and developed stage," Mr Davies told The Age after speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra. The cigarettes were part of a new "frontier" but were unlikely to be tested initially in Australia, he said.

While acknowledging that Australia was a leader in tobacco control, he said New Zealand, the European Union and the United States had gone further towards setting up scientific committees to oversee tobacco regulation.

"They have acknowledged that now there is this next phase, this next frontier, if you will, of regulation to address the harm that's caused to people who, everyone knows, are going to be smokers next year, 10 years from now, 50 years from now," he said.

"You are going to have smokers now and into the long, long foreseeable future."
A statement issued by parliamentary secretary for health Christopher Pyne welcomed Philip Morris' exploration of low harm options but said the Federal Government's priority was still to lower the smoking rate.

The anti-tobacco lobby has mixed feelings about "low-harm" cigarettes.
Quit Victoria executive director Todd Harper said he did not want the debate to be driven by Philip Morris.
"I certainly acknowledge that the idea of reduced-harm cigarettes needs to be considered and needs to be on the table," he said. "But I'm very concerned that the tobacco industry is positioning itself to influence the public health debate on this issue.

"At the end of the day, this is still an industry that makes money out of addicting people and keeping them smokers as long as possible."

An estimated 4000 chemicals are naturally produced when tobacco is burnt. Many of these are harmful.
Philip Morris, which makes Peter Jackson, Marlboro and other cigarette brands, is trying to distinguish itself from its competitors by being more socially responsible.

It has recently been criticised for buying 40 per cent of Indonesian cigarette maker Sampoerna, which the anti-tobacco lobby said was at odds with its stance, since tobacco regulation in Asia is minimal and up to 70 per cent of the population smokes.