Suit alleges 'light' label misleading on cigarettes

Class-action lawsuits seeking billions of dollars from tobacco companies have been filed in 11 states contending cigarette makers use terms like "light" to mislead smokers into believing those brands are safer.

The same argument helped survivors of a 53-year-old Oregon woman who died from lung cancer win a jury award of $150 million from Philip Morris Cos. Inc. last week.

The class-action lawsuits name the nation's three largest tobacco companies -- Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Brown & Williamson Corp. -- and allege violations of consumer protection laws.

"It's a scam, because they get people to believe that they reduce health risks when that is a false statement," said Stephen Sheller, a Philadelphia attorney who began preparing the cases four years ago.

Tobacco companies say the lawsuits have no merit. R.J. Reynolds spokesman Seth Moskowitz said cigarette manufacturers use terms like "full-flavor," "lights" and "ultra lights" to differentiate strength of taste and amount of tar and nicotine.

"These terms do not, and are not meant to, imply that any cigarette brand style or any category of cigarettes is safer than any other," he said.

The Oregon jury said Philip Morris falsely represented low-tar cigarettes as more healthful.

It was the first such verdict in the nation.

No FTC definition

The Federal Trade Commission, which has some regulatory authority over marketing and advertising of cigarettes, does not define "light." The tobacco industry generally uses that term to describe cigarettes with less than 15 milligrams of tar, a carcinogen produced when tobacco is burned.

Tar helps deliver nicotine to smokers.

The effort to market low-tar cigarettes gained momentum in the 1960s, after some health advocates said they could reduce health risks, including cancer.

Former U.S. Surgeon General Julius Richmond recommended in 1981 that smokers switch to lights if they couldn't quit. That position has since been dropped, but sales of light cigarettes have boomed. They now account for the majority of the U.S. cigarette market.

While more people were turning to light cigarettes, the American Cancer Society was conducting studies -- the first in the 1960s and the second in the 1980s -- that found lung cancer death rates among smokers rose even though tar levels had dropped.

A National Cancer Institute study last fall offered an explanation. It found cigarettes that yielded low tar and nicotine when tested on government-approved machines gave off higher levels when smoked by people.

That's because people who smoke lights tend to inhale more deeply and take more puffs to get the nicotine they need.

The study, cited as evidence in the class-action lawsuits, said cigarette manufacturers knew about this phenomenon and designed their products to register low tar readings in machine tests. One way: ventilation holes in the filter.

The holes help lower tar levels in machine tests but can offer little or no benefit to real smokers, whose fingers and lips often cover them.

Unusual method

Attorney Van Bunch, who filed a class-action suit in Tennessee, said tobacco companies should include labels telling smokers "you have to use the cigarette in an unusual way to get the benefits of lights."

The cancer institute study found people who smoke lights typically believe they are reducing their health risk.

Sheller points to a 1999 Brown & Williamson ad for Carlton cigarettes that read, "Isn't it time you started thinking about number one?" A 1974 R.J. Reynolds ad carried the headline "To smoke or not to smoke" and suggested if smokers did not want to quit, they should try Vantage.

John Hines, a lead plaintiff in the class-action suit filed against Philip Morris in Florida, switched to Marlboro Lights in the 1980s.

"The word light itself meant to me that it would probably be better for you," said Hines, 48, of Palm City, Fla. "Why should a company make a profit on something they lied to the people about?"

William Ohlemeyer, Philip Morris' vice president and associate general counsel, said the company never attempted to deceive anyone.

"There is a warning on these cigarettes that is identical to every pack of cigarettes sold in this country," Ohlemeyer said. "There is no such thing as a safe cigarette. No one has ever advertised these cigarettes as being safe."

Dr. David Burns, who helped write the cancer institute study and the earlier surgeon general's report, said government officials "didn't understand how carefully the cigarettes were designed" to perform differently on machines.

Ohlemeyer said the industry expressed concerns about the government's testing methods long ago. In documents filed in the Illinois class-action case, Philip Morris quoted a 1967 press release from the now-defunct Tobacco Institute saying the testing method "will result in figures that will be misleading and deceptive to the public."