Tobacco: The Unfinished Filter

Just eight months after proudly announcing its support of the Strickman cigarette filter—for which it received a major financial interest in return—Columbia University last week did an embarrassed about-face. Acting at the request of the inventor, New Jersey Chemist Robert L. Strickman, who felt that the university was dragging its feet on the product, Columbia backed out of the deal. The university said that it had made "a well-intentioned mistake in entering a highly controversial and competitive commercial field." It had indeed, suggested Washington's Democratic Senator Warren Magnuson. The outspoken tobacco industry foe charged that Strickman's secret polymer device was...