BRITISH TOBACCO FIRM ADMITTED CIGARETTES ARE ADDICTIVE IN'70s

LONDON-Britain's biggest tobacco company secretly admitted 20 years ago
that cigarettes are highly addictive and that nicotine is poisonous.

The admission, in internal British American Tobacco documents, flies in the
face of tobacco companies' arguments, used in their defense in the United
States as recently as last month, that cigarettes are not addictive.

According to the papers, BAT even considered developing an addictive
alternative to cigarettes to appeal to ex-smokers and people who were
trying to give up smoking because they realized that their future profits
depended on keeping customers hooked.

The internal documents have been hailed by lawyers representing British
ex-smokers suing the tobacco firms "as the most explicit piece of evidence
to come out so far" about cigarettes and addiction.