Tobacco Firms Ordered to Give Up Secret Files
In a devastating defeat for the tobacco industry, a Minnesota judge Saturday ordered the nation's major cigarette companies to turn over 39,000 confidential documents that they waged a long, bitter and expensive battle to keep secret. The judge ruled that the papers show evidence of crime or fraud.
An outline of some of the documents, described in a 140-page report by a special master in the case, indicates that the papers represent the clearest evidence to date of the lengths to which the industry went to suppress evidence about the health hazards of its products and how it manipulated nicotine to keep smokers addicted.
The master's report, unsealed Saturday, also represents the most comprehensive assessment yet by a judicial officer of the stark contradictions between the companies' public positions and what their internal documents show that they knew in private.
Smoke lawsuit--A March 8 story said the judge in Minnesota's massive lawsuit against the tobacco industry ordered the disclosure of many previously secret industry documents, including one study that came from the files of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. The document referred to "the brand preferences" and "starting behavior" of 5-year-olds. The study was actually a report done for B&W's Canadian affiliate, Imperial Tobacco Co.
The report contains page after page of descriptions of material the industry tried to keep from the public on a host of topics for over four decades. Some of the most dramatic examples:
* The master said that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was trying to keep confidential a 1957 memo by company scientist Alan Rodgman titled: "Cigarette Smoking Termed Lethal Habit With Some Addiction Involved."
* A 1959 report by the British American Tobacco Co. expressed fears about "destroying the nicotine habit in a large number of consumers and preventing it ever being acquired by new smokers."
* A 1961 report by BATCO scientist Sir Charles Ellis referred to smokers as "nicotine addicts." That was 27 years before the U.S. surgeon general issued a report characterizing smoking as "addictive."
* An undated Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. document described company research on the "starting [smoking] behavior of children as young as 5 years old."
* Documents from BATCO and Philip Morris about shipping material "off-shore" or to other countries to keep them secret.
Attorneys for the major cigarette companies maintained that Ramsey County District Judge Kenneth J. Fitzpatrick's ruling is legally and factually flawed and will be appealed as soon as possible. The attorneys said they do not intend to voluntarily comply with the order to turn over the documents by 8 a.m. Monday in St. Paul.
But Minnesota Atty. Gen. Hubert H. Humphrey III called the ruling "one of the most monumental public health decisions in American history. . . . The tobacco industry's 40-year game of hide-and-seek has ended."
