33 



Dr. DeNoble, you don't have that same responsibility; you are a 

 scientist. And I want to ask you, do you agree with the statement 

 we heard from the executives under oath, that nicotine is not ad- 

 dictive? 



Mr. DeNoble. I'll answer that in 1994, not 1984. I think there 

 is an overwhelming body of evidence that nicotine does produce an 

 addiction in the human. That overwhelming body of evidence does 

 not come from my single rat study or Paul's study on tolerance. So 

 my opinion in 1994 is, yes. I think in 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, and 

 1984, I think there were some doubts in my mind because the data 

 wasn't there. 



Mr. Synar. So what you are saying is that your study didn't de- 

 finitively prove that nicotine was addictive. But it predicted that 

 this was a serious problem, as you had seen, and therefore occa- 

 sioned further study and review? Is that basically what you are 

 saying today? 



Mr. DeNoble. It certainly did indicate that nicotine had an 

 abuse liability and we needed to look further to determine other 

 factors, yes. 



Mr. Synar. Mr. Johnson, the chairman of RJR, during his testi- 

 mony a couple of weeks back, said that nicotine is comparable to 

 saccharine and chocolate. Your study doesn't support that propo- 

 sition, does it? 



Mr. DeNoble. No, sir, it does not. 



Mr. Synar. In fact, that's stretching the truth a little bit to say 

 that we could compare nicotine to saccharine and chocolate? 



Mr. DeNoble. Experimentally, scientifically, I believe that to be 

 correct, yes. 



Mr. Synar. You've testified this morning. Dr. DeNoble, that one 

 purpose of the analogue research study was to find a synthetic 

 form of nicotine with reduced cardiovascular effects. Why were 

 your superiors at Philip Morris concerned about the cardiovascular 

 effect of nicotine? 



Mr. DeNoble. That program actually was in existence before I 

 got to Philip Morris. The nicotine analogue program I know was 

 there before I got there because the analogues were there, and they 

 also had some animal experiments ongoing. 



The discussions around nicotine in the 1980's — in the late 1970's, 

 early 1980's was that there was a cardiovascular risk. Clearly, nico- 

 tine has effects on the cardiovascular system. It was also clear that 

 efibct on the cardiovascular system could be related to increased 

 heart disease. 



So the objective of the program was to come up with a molecule 

 that would mimic nicotine's effect in the brain, and would not af- 

 fect the peripheral nervous system and therefore not have cardio- 

 vascular liability. 



Mr. Synar. So beyond addictiveness, nicotine has other con- 

 sequences with respect to the health of a person? 



Mr. DeNoble. Yes. 



Mr. Synar. Dr. DeNoble, could you outline the official policy at 

 Philip Morris with respect to documentation of studies? What I'm 

 interested in is how were the original papers that you worked on 

 archived? How were the documents maintained? Where were they 



