TRIAL REVEALS SECRET 'KICK' THAT BOOSTED MARLBORO SALES

St. Paul, Minn.

They called it "the secret of Marlboro."

R.J. Reynolds was desperate in the mid-1970s to learn why its leading
brand, Winston, was losing market share to Philip Morris' Marlboro. So
were other tobacco companies that were losing out in a ruthlessly
competitive business.

"We couldn't figure out what the success of Marlboro was," said David
Bernick, an attorney for Brown & Williamson. "We couldn't figure out why it
was that Marlboro was taking off in sales."

The reason, as it turned out was ammonia, a chemical that boosted
Marlboro's nicotine "kick" and improved the taste at the same time,
according to documents and testimony emerging from Minnesota's lawsuit
against the tobacco industry.

"The secret of Marlboro is ammonia," according to a 1989 Brown & Williamson
document. "Ammonia does many good things."

Two expert witnesses for the state told the jury in detail how tobacco
companies use various ammonia compounds to alter the chemistry of cigarette
smoke to give smokers a stronger nicotine dose.

The way ammonia works, they said, is that it makes the smoke less acidic.
That changes a portion of its nicotine into "free nicotine," a form that is
more readily absorbed in the lungs. Free nicotine's effects are felt in the
brain within seconds.

The experts-a Mayo Clinic authority on nicotine addiction and a Stanford
University chemical engineering professor -said boosting free nicotine also
ensured that cigarettes would remain addictive even though the companies
were bringing out low-tar, low-nicotine brands.

"What the industry was concerned with, in the face of lowering tar, is the
problem they would face if nicotine levels dropped" below the level needed
to keep smokers hooked, testified Channing Robertson of Stanford. "They
didn't want to go out of business."

Marlboro was the first major brand to really capitalize on ammonia, jurors
learned.

Reynolds' scientists learned that Philip Morris had begun using an
ammoniated form of tobacco in 1965 and used-more and more of it from 1965
to 1974.