362 



The company has also sent a letter to ABC News (copy attached) concerning a 

 "Day One" segment that clearly implied that Reynolds Tobacco "boosts" the nicotine 

 content of its cigarettes by adding nicotine to reconstituted tobacco This could not be 

 farther from the truth. Nicotine is, in fact, lost during the process, so the reconstitution 

 process actually results in tobacco with lower yields of nicotine than either 1) unprocessed 

 tobacco leaf or 2) the small pieces of tobacco and tobacco stems used to manufacture the 

 reconstituted sheets. 



For the committee's information, the reconstitution process was developed to 

 reduce raw material waste by making the most efficient use of the tobacco that is 

 purchased without compromising the taste or smoking characteristics of the final product. 

 The reconstitution process is similar to the process used to produce paper Once the 

 tobacco pulp is formed into sheets of tobacco, nicotine and other natural flavorings that 

 were extracted with water from the tobacco during the process are returned to their 

 original source. 



Battelle, a highly respected independent laboratory, recently reviewed RJR's 

 reconstitution process and analyzed reconstituted tobacco produced by that process. 

 Their tests confirmed that the process does not increase nicotine in the finjd tobacco sheet 

 and that some nicotine is, in fact, lost during the process. A copy of Battelle's preliminary 

 report is attached 



Contrary to statements made by Congressman Mike Synar in the "Day One" 

 report, the tobacco industry has never hidden the fact that it uses reconstituted tobacco 

 Had Congressman Synar or ABC's reporters conducted even a cursory review of the 

 public information on reconstituted tobacco, they would have learned that the process has 

 been extensively discussed in published documents by the National Cancer Institute (in at 

 least five reports), the Surgeon General (in at least three Surgeon General's Reports) and 

 others The Surgeon General's Reports also document that the use of reconstituted 

 tobacco results in a reduction of nicotine 



