Stung by Smoking Bans, the Tobacco Industry Creates a New Hook

Let's get one thing straight: R.J. Reynolds Co.'s new dissolvable tobacco product is not — repeat NOT — designed to appeal to kids.

Nothing about new Camel Orbs, which look and taste like breath mints but contain all the nicotine punch of cigarettes, is for kids.

Certainly not the shape, which resembles a Tic Tac. Or their sleek, brightly colored metal container.

Orbs are completely different from R.J. Reynolds' notorious, candy-flavored cigarettes with names like "Twista Lime" and "Winter Warm Toffee." They were pulled off the market last fall, so get over them already.

Just because R.J. Reynolds invented Joe Camel, public health advocates have jumped to the conclusion that it is once again aiming marketing messages at teenagers.

Honestly, where do people get crazy ideas like that?

In 1973, a former research chemist named Claude E. Teague set down his thoughts about "the youth market."

He was then the assistant director of research and development at R.J. Reynolds. His report was marked "confidential" in bold, black letters. Alas, it didn't remain confidential.

"We are presently, and I believe unfairly, constrained from directly promoting cigarettes to the youth market," he wrote. "If our company is to survive and prosper over the long term, we must get our share" of that market.

Mr. Teague's point: No industry that kills its best customers can survive for long — unless it can attract new ones.

So he recommended new brands to appeal to young people. And he suggested that tobacco companies manipulate nicotine levels in their products, providing just enough to hook young smokers, but not so much that they're turned off by the harsh taste.

Mr. Teague was a visionary. In 1972, decades before former Food and Drug Commissioner David Kessler tried to regulate cigarettes as a "drug delivery vehicle," Mr. Teague wrote: "A tobacco product is, in essence, a vehicle for delivery of nicotine . . . in a generally acceptable and attractive form."

The trouble, then as now, was that many nonsmokers — or, as Mr. Teague preferred to call them, "pre-smokers" — thought tobacco was yucky. This caused Mr. Teague to muse, "There should be some simpler, 'cleaner,' more efficient and direct way to provide the desired nicotine dosage than the present system involving combustion of tobacco or even chewing of tobacco."

That's a pretty good description of Camel Orbs. It's also a good description of so-called "e-cigarettes," electronic devices that deliver nicotine without combustion.

An editorial in this week's edition of the journal Pediatrics warns about the dangers of new smokeless tobacco products like Orbs. Some groups already are calling on the FDA, which recently was given authority to regulate tobacco products, to require prominent warnings on the labels.

Mr. Teague would have approved. He wrote in 1973, "A new brand aimed at young people should ... perhaps carry some implied risk. In this sense, the warning label on the package may be a plus."

At least it would be if R.J. Reynolds were trying to appeal to teenagers. Which, of course, it's not.

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