Pubdate: Tue, 03 Jun 2014
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2014 The Baltimore Sun Company
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Evan Halper, Tribune Newspapers
Page: 7

CIGARETTE FIRMS EYED SELLING POT IN 1970S

WASHINGTON - Richard Nixon was in the White House, 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 the
University of San Francisco show 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
now pushing legalization across the nation.

One company even asked a federal counternarcotics 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
today 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 Center for Tobacco
Control Research and Education at the University of California at San
Francisco.

"The only thing they were wrong on is they thought legalization would
happen a lot sooner," Glantz said.

Legalization seemed in the air in the 1970s, although 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 Ronald Reagan oversaw a crackdown that included
imprisonment for thousands of nonviolent offenders.

The tobacco companies say the documents are no longer
relevant.

"Our companies have no plans to sell marijuana-based products," said
David Sylvia, a spokesman for Altria, the parent company of Philip
Morris.

Company denials were also emphatic in 1971, when Joseph Cullman,
chairman of the board at Philip Morris, declared marijuana was nowhere
on its corporate radar. A 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 came of the project. Nor
do staff at the Justice Department or the National Institute on 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 his team had learned from a "reliable source" that Philip
Morris "was granted a special permit to grow, cultivate and make
marijuana extracts."

Over at British American Tobacco, the world's second-largest tobacco
firm, documents show a confidential research effort labeled the "Pot
Project" was launched in the United Kingdom.
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MAP posted-by: Matt