Daily Doc: BAT, Oct 29, 1986: SAFE Cigarette Project
Daily Doc: SAFE Cigarette Project
Title: SAFE Cigarette Project
BAT, Oct 29, 1986
Bates #: 304017352/304017357
April 8, 2000
In this correspondence a British American Tobacco Company executive explains why he doesn't believe the tobacco industry should research and manufacture a "safer cigarette":
"The BAT objective is and should be to make the whole subject of smoking acceptable to the authorities and to the public at large since this is the real challenge facing the Industry."and...
"...in attempting to develop a "safe" cigarette you are, by implication, in danger of being interpreted as accepting that the current product is 'unsafe' and this is not a position that I think we should take..."
CITATION
Title: SAFE Cigarette Project
Type of Document: Letter, correspondence
Author P. Sheehy (British American Tobacco, inferred)
Recipient: P. Crawford, Esq. Imasco Ltd. Montreal, Canada
Date: 19861029
Page Count: 6, including attachments
Bates No. 304017352/304017357
Site: Guildford Document Site : http://www.cctc.ca/ncth/guildford/ - Click on Title List 2/3 (then go down the list and look for the title "SAFE Cigarette Project" on the list) **
URL: This site does not allow the transfer of URLs. To find this document, go to the site, click on the title list 2/3, then scroll down until you find the title SAFE Cigarette Project. All documents on this site are listed by title and are in PDF format. You will need Acrobat Reader to view them (available to download free on the site).
[** Rick Fehr of Fayette County, Georgia just brought this document site to my attention. It is a Canadian website listing some of the documents found in the Guildford Depository in England.]
QUOTES
...I have reviewed your position with my colleagues. Since there is such a wide despcrepancy between your approach and that of the rest of the Group, I thought that I should write to explain why it is that I cannot support your contention that we should give a higher priority to projects aimed at developing a "safe" cigarette (as perceived by those who claim our current product is "unsafe") by either eliminating, or at least reducing to acceptable levels, all components claimed by our critics to be carcinogenic...
The BAT objective is and should be to make the whole subject of smoking acceptable to the authorities and to the public at large since this is the real challenge facing the Industry. Not only do I believe that this is the right objective but I also believe that it is an achievable one....
...A second practical objection is that in attempting to develop a "safe" cigarette you are, by implication, in danger of being interpreted as accepting that the current product is "unsafe" and this is not a position that I think we should take...
As you can see, there is no disagreement on the importance that we all place on the need for fundamental research leading to results which will have a practical impact on the acceptability of our product...Where we part company from the Imasco approach is that we do not believe that there is a sufficiently high chance of a successful outcome to justify committing the very large scale of resources that would be necessary to pursue the direct ...approach which your people are proposing. This is why I cannot support this line of research....
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