Filter Cigarettes And The "Tar Derby"

Tobacco companies responded to the growing public concern over the health effects of smoking by heavily promoting new types of cigarettes, such as cigarettes with filters in the 1950s and "low-tar" cigarettes beginning in the mid-1960s. The documents show that these new brands were not clearly "healthier" than the old brands. Instead, the new brands were designed for marketing purposes, so that tobacco companies could claim in their advertisements that their brand had "lower tar" than the others, even though low-tar cigarettes did not necessarily reduce the health risks of smoking. (BAT scientists made a distinction between "health-oriented" cigarettes, which incorporated technological advances that had been tested and were known to reduce hazards, and "health-image" cigarettes, which were designed to give smokers the illusion of smoking a safer product. This distinction was later formalized at the BAT Hilton Head research conference in 1968; see chapter 4.)

The tobacco industry's strategy of developing filter and low-tar cigarettes is the subject of a memorandum titled "Industry Response to the Cigarette/Health Controversy" {2205.01}. This memo, written in 1976 by Ernest Pepples, B&W's vice president and general counsel, provides an overview of the industry's public relations strategies. (This memo, which describes the industry's response to the "smoking and health controversy," is discussed in more detail in chapter 7. We limit our discussion here to the portion that refers to the industry's development of filter cigarettes.)

In his memo Pepples points out that the tobacco industry's first response to the growing public concern over the health effects of smoking was to "produce more filter brands and brands with lower tar delivery" {2205.01}. As a result of this strategy, he notes, the market share of filter cigarettes had grown rapidly during the 1950s and 1960s, giving rise to an atmosphere of fierce competition that became known as the "tar derby," because tobacco companies were competing to deliver the lowest tar possible. Perhaps most important, toward the end of his discussion Pepples concedes that the filters did not actually make the cigarettes healthier, but only gave smokers the illusion of smoking a healthier product.

The industry has moved strongly toward filter cigarettes, which have increased from .6% in 1950 to 87% in 1975. KENT cigarettes were introduced in 1952 with an unusually heavy promotion campaign discussing the micronite filter. Other companies moved strongly into the rapidly growing filter market. In 1951, nine out of twenty brands on the market accounted for as much as 1% of market share. By 1964, 17 of 41 brands had more than 1% share of market. [This proliferation of brands reflects the impact the introduction of filter cigarettes had on consumption patterns.]

This became known as the "tar derby" of the late 1950's. It was characterized by sharply intensified advertising competition. By 1963 well over half of the total unit output was composed of brands which were unknown before 1950.

The new filter brands vying for a piece of the growing filter market made extraordinary claims. There was an urgent effort to highlight and differentiate one brand from the others already on the market. It was important to have the most filter traps. Some claimed to possess the least tars. In most cases, however, the smoker of a filter cigarette was getting as much or more nicotine and tar as he would have gotten from a regular cigarette . He had abandoned the regular cigarette, however, on the ground of reduced risk to health [emphasis added]. {2205.01, p. 2}

Pepples adds that government regulation had actually helped the industry put a stop to the "tar derby" by allowing tobacco companies to end their expensive television advertising campaigns.

This sort of advertising led to the first attempts by the Federal Trade Commission to regulate the industry. A further consequence of the "tar derby"

was the rapid increase in advertising expenditures during this period. Advertising expenditures in selected media jumped from over $55 million in 1952 to approximately $150 million in 1959. The "tar derby" was ended by a voluntary agreement between the FTC and the cigarette companies in 1960. The competition in advertising continued to be fierce, however, with expenditures doubling again by 1970 to a figure of approximately $314 million.

In announcing the agreement, Earl W. Kintner, then FTC Chairman, stated that in "the absence of a satisfactory uniform test and proof of advantage to the smoker, there will be no more tar and nicotine claims in advertising." Kintner said the tar and nicotine blackout was "a landmark example of industry-government cooperation in solving a pressing problem." The Consumers Union, however, felt that the end of the "tar derby" was to the industry's advantage and to the public's disadvantage. It said that the cigarette industry had succeeded in extricating itself from [an] embarrassing position [emphasis added; pages 3–5 of this nine-page document are missing from our files]. {2205.01, p. 2}

This memo suggests that the tobacco industry promoted filter and low-tar cigarettes primarily for public relations purposes. (Filter cigarettes had been marketed since the 1930s.) Tobacco companies realized that their customers were concerned about the reports that cigarette smoking might be dangerous, and they therefore introduced new products designed to calm those fears.