150 



of new drugs, biologicals, and devices and to monitor the safety of 

 the food supply. 



Thank you. I will be pleased to respond to questions. 



Mr. Waxman. Thank you. 



Dr. Connolly, 



STATEMENT OF GREGORY N. CONNOLLY 



Mr. Connolly. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 



I am Gregory Connolly, Director of the Massachusetts Tobacco 

 Control Program representing the American Public Health Associa- 

 tion. 



We are a $52 million State agency to curb smoking in Massachu- 

 setts. That is three times the amount of money CDC receives to 

 curb smoking nationally, just in our State. 



Having heard the resource problems at FDA, we are prepared to 

 give FDA a grant to regulate tobacco. It will be the first time in 

 the history of the country that a State gave the Federal Govern- 

 ment a grant. 



I was here 9 years ago before Mr. Waxman and Congressman 

 Synar with a widow from Oklahoma whose son tragically died of 

 smokeless tobacco use. We worked and got a bill through Congress 

 that dealt with the advertising, not the regulation of the product. 

 The regulations for that bill went through in 1987. 



If you look at that chart, we failed; smokeless tobacco use is 

 going up. Why? Because the tobacco industry and U.S. tobacco in 

 particular has conducted very detailed research on the action of 

 nicotine on humans. This is a study summarized in the Marcy 

 court case where they took naive tobacco users, gave them snuff, 

 precisely measured their blood yields and compared that to what 

 they called habituated smokers. 



In the court record, their vice president read, taste and 

 strength — that is nicotine — should be medium, recognizing the fact 

 that routinely all tobacco use is based upon nicotine, the kick. That 

 is directly from the industry documents. 



They took this knowledge and created new products to hook a 

 generation of young Americans. They called for three brands in 

 their graduation strategy, a high nicotine brand, a medium brand, 

 and low brand. What they designed for the low brand was the 

 Skoal Bandit. They said it is for age groups 15 to 35 — 15 to 35 — 

 and they called it nicotine satisfaction. 



They developed what they call a graduation strategy. And the 

 graduation strategy was that after a period of time, there was a 

 natural progression to products switching to brands that are more 

 full bodied, less flavored, and more concentrated tobacco. 



As far as entering into a new market — this is from the vice presi- 

 dent of the company — Skoal Bandit is the introductory product. 

 Then we look toward establishing the normal graduation process. 

 The bottom line is the Bandit is the vehicle by which we are going 

 to expand consumption. 



We can look at their advertising. This is where they put their ad 

 dollars. In 1983 about half of ad dollars went for this brand, yet 

 it only had 2 percent of market. No advertising has been done of 

 any appreciable measure for the higher nicotine brand, Copenha- 



