28 



reported to have been produced for Brown & Williamson's sister 

 company, the British American Tobacco Company, and labeled 



39 



"Confidential. A Tentative Hypothesis on Nicotine Addiction." 



As reported, it contains a number of statements regarding the 



powerful effect of nicotine on the body: 



"Chronic intake of nicotine tends to restore the normal 

 physiological functioning of the endocrine system, so that 

 ever-increasing dose levels of nicotine are necessary to 

 maintain the desired action. Unlike other dopings, such as 

 morphine, the demand for increasing dose levels is 

 relatively slow for nicotine." (Chart 30) 



Other statements reportedly made in this paper speak 



directly to the addictive nature of nicotine. The report goes on 



to 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 explains the addiction 

 of the individual to nicotine." (Chart 31) 



IV. CONCLUSION 



The information that we have presented today has been the 

 result of painstaking investigation. We now know that a tobacco 

 company commercially developed a tobacco plant with twice the 

 nicotine content of standard tobacco, that several million pounds 

 of this high-nicotine tobacco are currently stored in warehouses, 

 and that this tobacco was put into cigarettes that have been sold 

 nationwide. We now know that several tobacco companies add 

 ammonia compounds to cigarettes, and that one company's documents 

 confirm that one of the intended purposes 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 

 manipulation and control of nicotine undertaken in the tobacco 

 industry. 



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

 the industry's assertion that nicotine is not addictive. Up 

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

 it did not believe that nicotine was addictive. The release of 



