THE SHAMEFUL TACTICS OF ONE TOBACCO GIANT

THE TOBACCO companies are going to have a hard time wriggling out of this one.

``This young adult market, the 14-to-24 age group . . . represent(s)
tomorrow's cigarette business,'' a top R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company
marketing official wrote to the board of directors in 1974. He recommended
a ``direct advertising appeal to the younger smokers.''

A 1973 RJR memo opined that a ``comic-strip type copy might get a much
higher readership among younger people than any other type of copy.'' And a
1987 document explained that a new Camel product called Camel Wides was
``targeted at (the) younger adult male smoker (primarily 13-to-24-year- old
male Marlboro smokers).''

It's not that anyone who had been tracking tobacco industry obfuscation or
analyzing the Joe Camel ads believed tobacco executives when they testified
before Congress in 1994 that they never knew of efforts to direct cigarette
advertising at teenagers under 18.

But the release of confidential market ing surveys, communications to the
RJR board of directors, reports by outside advertising firms and other
internal industry documents lays down in black and white the effort to
capture the youth market. Almost 90 percent of smokers take their first
drag before the age of 18.

The benefit of catching cigarette makers in a whopper of a lie -- and
thanks are due San Francisco City Attorney Louise Renne and Representative
Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, for making the documents public -- is that it
gives a hand up to Congress and others considering tobacco settlements.

Knowing what it knows -- and the documents are damning -- may convince
Congress to pull a provision in the tentative $368.5 billion settlement
worked out with states that protects the tobacco industry from lawsuits. As
former Food and Drug Administration chief David Kessler remarked, ``I think
these documents show this is an industry that deserves no special
protections.''

However, the goal in any legislation or settlement should be to cut the
rate of teenage smoking. Currently, 3,000 teenagers a day start to smoke.

But President Clinton is right that timing is critical. RJR's defense of
the memos is ludicrous, trying to brush off the contradictions to a
different era's attitudes or to typographical errors. The time for Congress
to strike is now.

)1998 San Francisco Chronicle