Cocoa

Cocoa has long been an ingredient in American blend cigarettes. In the 1970s the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) cigarette testing program found that cocoa added to a tobacco blend increases the carcinogenicity of cigarette smoke condensate {1319.03}. While the results were not statistically significant, they prompted the British government to ban the use of cocoa in tobacco products. By 1983, however—after additional toxicological data were submitted to the British government's Independent Scientific Committee—the cocoa ban was lifted in the UK for additions of cocoa up to 5 percent of the tobacco weight {1319.03}

An article about cocoa came to the attention of senior executives at B&W in June 1984. The article itself is not in the documents, and it is not clear how it came to B&W's attention. General Counsel Ernest Pepples shared the article with B&W executive vice president Thomas Sandefur, who in turn passed it on to E. E. Kohnhorst, vice president of R&D {1319.02}. Kohnhorst asked Gil Esterle, B&W manager of smoking and health affairs, and Jim Rosene, a B&W research scientist, to analyze it {1319.01}. Esterle and Rosene gave their report to Kohnhorst by early July {1319.03}.

Esterle and Rosene's report confirms that cocoa is used extensively by the industry as an additive and summarizes the NCI findings that cocoa increases the carcinogenicity of tobacco smoke condensate. In B&W products, the report indicates, cocoa levels in cigarettes are about 0.5 percent and up to 5 percent in pipe tobaccos; Philip Morris and R. J. Reynolds

use about the same amounts of cocoa, but Lorillard has replaced cocoa with a proprietary substitute. Lorillard's substitution of something else for cocoa had been verified by the absence of theobromine (an alkaloid in cocoa) from Lorillard brand cigarettes. The document continues:

In the recent past, we attempted with only very limited success to delete cocoa from our cigarettes. Cocoa is incorporated in most of our new products. To eliminate cocoa from all our brands would be a multi-year, costly program, with all indications of minimal success as measured against competitors [sic ] products that use cocoa. Consequently, we recommend not actively pursuing a cocoa deletion/replacement program at this time. Rather the industry should defend the use of cocoa [emphasis added]. {1319.03, pp. 2–3}

A handwritten summary of this report indicates that Kohnhorst shared the main points with Sandefur {1319.01}. So, even though Lorillard had successfully stopped using cocoa in its cigarettes, B&W decided not to do so itself because of economic concerns. The data indicating that cocoa increases the carcinogenicity of cigarette smoke did not seem overwhelming to B&W at the time, and there was no governmental pressure for it to make the change.