Pubdate: Tue, 03 Jun 2014
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Evan Halper
Page: B1

TOBACCO INDUSTRY HAD HIGH HOPES FOR POT

In the Late 1960s and Early '70s, Major Firms Investigated Joining 
Marijuana Business.

WASHINGTON - Richard Nixon was in the White House and his "war on 
drugs" was in full swing, yet Big Tobacco was secretly exploring the 
possibility of becoming Big Pot.

Newly discovered documents from tobacco company archives at UC San 
Francisco show that major companies in the cigarette industry 
investigated joining the marijuana business in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The companies were driven then by the same shift in public attitudes 
that is now pushing legalization around the country.

One company even asked a federal counter-narcotics official to 
secretly secure marijuana from the government for research.

"We request that there be no publicity whatsoever," a Philip Morris 
vice president wrote in late 1969 to Milton Joffee, drug sciences 
chief at the Justice Department's narcotics bureau. "We will provide 
the results to you on a confidential basis, and request that you not 
identify in the form of any public announcement where the work has been done."

Joffee responded that Philip Morris could skip Food and Drug 
Administration review of its application for government pot. "I do 
not feel there is any bar to maintaining the confidentiality you 
request," he wrote.

The documents, discovered by public health researchers, were 
disclosed Tuesday in the Milbank Quarterly, a health policy journal. 
They not only shed new light on the Nixon era, but appear when some 
Wall Street analysts and health advocates say tobacco companies may 
again be considering the expanding market for legalized weed.

"The issues the tobacco companies were exploring are all still there 
today," said Stanton Glantz, director of the UC San Francisco Center 
for Tobacco Control Research and Education. "The only thing they were 
wrong on is they thought legalization would happen a lot sooner."

Legalization seemed in the air in the 1970s, though Nixon staunchly 
opposed it. He ignored a presidential commission's recommendation in 
1972 to decriminalize possession for personal use.

But 11 states would do just that between 1973 and 1977. Jimmy Carter 
was elected to the White House in 1976 on a platform that included 
marijuana decriminalization. Views shifted dramatically in the 1980s, 
however, and President Reagan oversaw a harsh crackdown that included 
imprisonment for thousands of nonviolent offenders.

The tobacco companies say the newly unearthed documents are no longer relevant.

"Our companies have no plans to sell marijuana-based products," said 
David Sylvia, a spokesman for Altria Group Inc., the parent company 
of Philip Morris. "We don't do anything related to marijuana at all."

Company denials were also emphatic in 1971 when Joseph Cullman, 
chairman of the board at Philip Morris, declared that marijuana was 
nowhere on its corporate radar. A handwritten note from the company 
president at the time, George Weissman, suggests otherwise.

The Philip Morris marijuana collaboration with the Justice 
Department, he wrote, was meant to explore "potential competition" 
and "a potential product."

Another Philip Morris memo, this one unsigned, laid out to executives 
the rationale for the marijuana research.

"We are in the business of relaxing people who are tense and 
providing a pickup for people who are bored or depressed," it said. 
"The only real threat to our business is that society will find other 
means of satisfying those needs."

Company officials say they do not know what ultimately came of the 
project. Nor do staff at the Justice Department or National Institute 
for Drug Abuse. No files could be found at the National Archives.

But the project clearly rattled other tobacco firms.

An internal memo from an executive at the American Tobacco Co. 
reported that his team had learned from a "reliable source" that 
Philip Morris "was granted a special permit to grow, cultivate and 
make marijuana extracts ... and that Philip Morris urged the State 
agency people to secrecy."

Over at British American Tobacco, the world's second-largest tobacco 
firm, documents show that a confidential research effort labeled the 
"Pot Project" was launched in Britain.

The firm's head science advisor, Charles Ellis, also drafted a 
detailed research plan to position British American Tobacco to 
produce "cannabis-loaded cigarettes."

Cigarettes mixed with marijuana, Ellis wrote in the 1970 document, 
were a "natural expansion of current smoking habits" and if pot 
became legal, such cigarettes would be "a change in habit much like 
moving to cigars."

He suggested that the firm "learn how to produce in quantity 
cigarettes loaded uniformly with a known amount of either ground 
cannabis or dried and cut cannabis rag."

It is unclear if any of the research was ever carried out.

"The 1970s were a long time ago," British American Tobacco said in 
statement. "Today, we have no interest whatsoever in participating in 
the marijuana market."

Big Tobacco's attraction to pot appeared to drop off in the 1980s. 
But the companies were intrigued again by the early 1990s, documents 
show, when R.J. Reynolds launched into research on the chemistry of marijuana.

The project was triggered by reports - later proved false - that a 
French competitor was manufacturing marijuana-laden smokes. An R.J. 
Reynolds executive also explained in an internal memo that the 
company needed to better acquaint itself with marijuana "in view of 
the possibility of its future more frequent use in certain European countries."

"I cannot begin to speculate on the thinking of management more than 
20 years ago," said David Howard, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds 
Tobacco Co. "Regarding the current cannabis market, we are not 
pondering any expansion or involvement in that market, nor do we 
conduct any research into marijuana."

Anti-smoking activists are skeptical. And some investors are betting 
that their suspicions are well founded.

"The tobacco companies may deny even thinking about it, but they have 
to think about it," said Gerry Sullivan, portfolio manager of the 
Vice Fund, a $300-million mutual fund made up of alcohol, tobacco, 
gambling and military company stocks.

"It is an opportunity to diversify their business and help benefit 
shareholders," Sullivan said. "That is what management is most likely 
pursuing in the dark corners of some research lab in Virginia."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom