A Cigarette Holder Burns One Puff at a Time

Philip Morris Cos. is planning to test a microelectronic cigarette holder
that eliminates the smoke and ashes from the end of a cigarette.

The batterypowered "smoking system" is the first of its kind and cost $200
million to develop after years of research.

The device is a beepersized, 4ounce box containing a specially designed
cigarette and an electronically controlled lighter that runs on
rechargeable batteries. The tobacco burns only when puffed; smokers could
take a puff from a cigarette in its holder, put it down and take another
puff an hour later.

But smokers must lift the device to their lips for each puff, as if smoking
a kazoo. That is not exactly the cool image of Humphrey Bogart with a
cigarette dangling from his lips. One future sight could well be a person
walking with a cellular phone in one hand, the smoking device in the other
and no more hands for carrying the laptop computer.

Critics say the device demonstrates the lengths to which the tobacco
industry will go to make a dangerous addiction more socially
acceptable. Richard A. Daynard, chairman of an antitobacco group,
the Tobacco Products Liability Project at the Northeastern University
School of Law in Boston, dismissed it as "clearly another
nicotinedelivery device."

He added: "Who would use an expensive and cumbersome thing like this if
they weren't hooked? There is something grim and desperate about it. This
is hardly the Marlboro Man, getting on his horse and checking the battery."

He added that children might be able to use the device to conceal smoking
from parents. (A microchip in the device is equipped with the equivalent of
the television Vchip a locking device for use by parents, Philip Morris
said.)

But the new product, tentatively called the Accord, could find a big market
among the "many smokers who voluntarily restrict their smoking at home or
in a car or because their spouse doesn't like it," said John R. Nelson, the
senior vice president of business development for Philip Morris USA, the
company's U.S. subsidiary. "We think our product would appeal to them."

Over the next month, the Accord will be made available to smokers in
controlled tests in the United States and Japan. It will not be
commercially available in test markets for at least a year.

"Ultimately, the success of Accord will depend on its taste and
convenience," said Martin Feldman, a tobacco analyst for Smith Barney.

The device will eliminate the smoke from a burning cigarette that accounts
for 90 percent of secondhand smoke. But smokers will still inhale the same
3 milligrams of tar and 0.2 milligram of nicotine that is in conventional
socalled ultralight cigarettes like the company's Merit, Virginia Slims
and Benson & Hedges brands.

Also, users will still exhale smoke. Philip Morris, the world's largest
cigarette company, said the product was not intended to get around laws
that restrict smoking. "This is a cigarettesmoking system governed by the
same rules restricting smoking in public places," said Karen Daragan, a
Philip Morris spokeswoman.

Accord cigarettes are 62 millimeters long, shorter than the 85millimeter
conventional cigarette, and will cost the same as premium cigarettes: $2.50
to $2.75 a pack. The cigarette holder, which the company has trademarked as
its "Puff Activated Lighter," as well as a battery recharger and a pack of
Accords will be sold in starter boxes for $50, according to the company's
initial projections. The company contends that cost is competitive with a
year's supply of disposable lighters.

The company will test whether smokers, accustomed to the ritual of handling
and lighting cigarettes, will want to use its "smokeinthebox" system. A
reporter found that the Accord took some getting used to, requiring a
slower draw for each puff than a conventional cigarette.

Indeed, smokers will have to create a new routine, buying a new brand of
cigarettes and remembering to recharge the battery in the lighter for each
pack. Recharging takes 30 minutes, but smokers can buy extra batteries.
Nelson said, "The beeper and the cell phone took a while to win acceptance,
too."

Smoking advocates backed him up.

"I think smokers have always been receptive to trying new innovations from
the tobacco industry," said Gary Auxier, a spokesman for the National
Smokers Alliance, a nonprofit prosmoker group. "Smokers have already had
to change many rituals in their lives, including where and when they can
smoke, so I don't see any barrier to using this product."

The Accord research was conducted by a team of 80 researchers in Richmond
working in secret. Cliff Lilly, the vice president of technology for Philip
Morris USA, which is producing Accord, said the company had spent five
years researching how to heat cigarettes electronically and five more years
designing Accord, using recent advances in battery technology. So far, the
company has won 47 patents on Accord and has filed for an additional 13, he
said.

Smokers insert an Accord cigarette into a 4inchlong, 1 1/2inch wide
midnightblue electronic box. An illuminated display shows the charge
remaining in the battery and the number of puffs remaining in the
eightpuff cigarette.

The microchip senses when the cigarette is being puffed and sends power to
eight heating blades around the cigarette. The chip will prevent ignition
if a conventional cigarette is inserted into the lighter.

The recharger also heats the burned tobacco debris and smoke residue from
the lighter, using a fan to draw it into a miniature catalytic converter,
which burns off the residues in the same way a selfcleaning oven does.

The company said it would not try to market Accord as a safer cigarette,
although Nelson contended that the controlled temperature would reduce some
harmful effects. The company will present its research on Accord to
peerreview scientific journals and at meetings early next year.

Companies have long introduced new products that purported to reduce the
smoke from cigarettes or make them safer. In 1988, the RJR Nabisco Holdings
Corp., the parent company of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., began
testmarketing Premier, a smokeless cigarette that heated, rather than
burned, tobacco.

The product quickly failed because it proved difficult to keep lighted and
tasted bad. But in 1996, Reynolds introduced an improved version called
Eclipse that is being testmarketed in Tennessee, Nebraska and Georgia.

When a smoker lights an Eclipse, a small amount of tobacco is burned, and a
carbon tip at the end of the cigarette is ignited. The smoldering carbon
device then heats a tobacco mixture. The Accord system differs in that it
does not burn continuously and uses electronics rather than carbon to heat
the tobacco.

R.J. Reynolds declined to comment on its rival's new product.

Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company