727 



Mr. Waxman. Are you familiar with this article? 



Mr. Spears, Yes, I am. 



Mr. Waxman. He says that measured nicotine per cigarette de- 

 notes total amount of nicotine and the length of cigarette tobacco 

 rod smoked in the standard FTC smoking machine assay, and he 

 went through 15 popular commercial cigarette brands were as- 

 sayed. What he shows in this graph is that the nicotine content of 

 cigarettes, even if it were a low tar cigarette, can be the same level 

 as in a non-low tar cigarette. 



Mr. Spears. You have introduced another subject, which is how 

 do people smoke cigarettes. I haven't read this article very recently, 

 but, please, it should be obvious that if people smoke more or less 

 cigarettes number-wise, this will change the amount of nicotine 

 that they receive. 



So the first question is are we standardizing the number of ciga- 

 rettes that this consumer takes in. Number two, people smoke ciga- 

 rettes in different ways. There's no question about that. Puff it 

 more frequently, you will get more than if you puff it less fre- 

 quently. But if you standardize all of these things, I believe that 

 the FTC numbers represent, as fairly as they can be represented, 

 the yield of cigarettes. 



Mr. Waxman. Dr. Spears, I'm going to move on. I'm going to let 

 you have this article to look at and we'll get back to it later. Let 

 me just submit to you that Dr. Benowitz is indicating that the nico- 

 tine levels of low tar cigarettes are as high in others and we'll ex- 

 amine what it means. I think we need to go into that in some de- 

 tail, what the smoker ingests as opposed to the concentration in 

 the tobacco and whether that's a meaningful distinction or not. 



Mr. Bliley. 



Mr. Bliley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, The first thing, I might, 

 in this series, run a little long, but since you went considerably be- 

 yond the 10 minutes, I hope you'll be considerate. 



First, I'd like to demand that any documents that this sub- 

 committee has requested be subject to strict confidentiality proce- 

 dures by the subcommittee and its staff in the receipt, review and 

 use of the materials which have been requested by all subcommit- 

 tee members. 



There are obvious proprietary concerns and others that we re- 

 quest that these procedures be strictly followed. 



Mr. Waxman. Mr. Bliley, when we get these documents and 

 there's a request for confidentiality, we will review that with the 

 members of the subcommittee. But I'm certainly not going to agree 

 that everything is going to be kept confidential because the tobacco 

 industry wants to keep it confidential. 



We have had too many things that have been kept out of the 

 public view and I'm not going to agree that ever3rthing they submit 

 to Congress can never be in the public view again. So I will not 

 agree to that proposition, but we can discuss it when the time 

 arises. 



Mr. Bliley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Johnston, as I under- 

 stand it, the question of the manufacturers' intent is very impor- 

 tant in order to determine whether or not the nicotine in cigarettes, 

 the caffeine in coffee or the alcohol in wine is a drug under Federal 

 law. This is confusing to me because I know caffeine helps me stay 



