13 



the action of smoking for many smokers. It may be useful, there- 

 fore, to look at the tobacco industry as if a large part of its business 

 is the administration of nicotine in the clinical sense." 



Other scientists are quoted in a May 30, 1963 paper that is re- 

 ported to have been produced for the British American Tobacco 

 Company and labeled confidential, a tentative Hypothesis on Nico- 

 tine Addiction. "Chronic intake of nicotine tends to restore the nor- 

 mal physiological functioning of the endocrine system, so that ever- 

 increasing dose levels of nicotine are necessary to maintain the de- 

 sired action. Unlike other dopings, such as morphine, the demand 

 for increasing dose levels is relatively slow for nicotine." 



Other statements reportedly made in this paper describe what 

 happens when a chronic smoker is denied nicotine: "A body left in 

 this unbalanced state craves for renewed drug intake in order to 

 restore the physiological equilibrium." "This unconscious desire ex- 

 plains the addiction of the individual to nicotine." 



The information that we have presented today has been the re- 

 sult of painstaking investigation. We now know that a tobacco com- 

 pany commercially developed a tobacco plant with twice the nico- 

 tine content of standard flue-cured tobacco, that several million 

 pounds of this high-nicotine tobacco are currently stored in ware- 

 nouses, and that this tobacco was put into cigarettes that have 

 been sold nationwide. 



We now understand that several tobacco companies add ammo- 

 nia compounds to cigarettes. Further, one company's documents 

 confirms that an intended purpose of this practice is to manipulate 

 nicotine delivery to the smoker. And we now know that some in the 

 industry have identified target ranges of nicotine delivery. 



These findings lay to rest any notion that there is no manipula- 

 tion and control of nicotine undertaken in the tobacco industry. 



It is equally important to lay to rest, once and for all, the indus- 

 try's assertion that nicotine is not addictive. 



Up until very recently, the tobacco industry was able to claim 

 that it does not believe that nicotine is addictive. The release of 

 company documents and the testimony of company scientists before 

 this subcommittee have opened a window on what some senior to- 

 bacco officials knew about nicotine's physiological and addictive 

 properties as much as 30 years ago. 



Mr. Chairman, members of this committee, one important thing 

 that every teenager in this country needs to know before deciding 

 to smoke his or her first cigarette is how one cigarette industry of- 

 ficial viewed the business of selling cigarettes. "We are, then, in the 

 business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug." 



Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



[The prepared statement and charts of Dr. David A. Kessler fol- 

 low:] 



