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The industry's strategy is to keep quiet but also to rush out new brands that are designed to carry an aura of safety. Hottest item on the market is the charcoal filter, which was given a lift after one member of the Surgeon General's panel, Harvard Chemist Louis F. Fieser, said offhandedly that he had switched to Liggett & Myers' charcoal-filtered Lark. Two weeks ago, P. Lorillard, which makes York Imperial-size, introduced a charcoal-tipped brand called York Filters. Another old brand, Brown & Williamson's Avalon, has returned with charcoal in the tip, and last week R. J. Reynolds announced a new charcoal-filtered cigarette called Tempo. The industry contends that the charcoal granules "scrub" out of the smoke a scary array of gases—including hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, ammonia and acrolein—that flatten the hairlike fibers protecting the respiratory system. But some also screen out so much of the taste that manufacturers are spiking their filters with rum, fruit and licorice flavoring.
Sales Slump. For the industry, February was disastrous. Tax reports last week showed that cigarette sales plummeted 18% in New York, 20% to 30% in Nebraska, Ohio, Wisconsin and Wyoming, more than 30% in Iowa and Washington, D.C. But there were signs that smokers were beginning to shake off the health reports instead of the habit. In Winston-Salem, Durham and Louisville, cigarette plants that had gone on three-and four-day weeks last month were back by now on full schedule. Kroger, Safeway and other supermarket chains reported that sales were rebounding—though not to what they were before.
Tobaccomen are plainly worried but still confident that almost all quitters will change their minds. They take heart from what happened in Britain. Antismoking posters cover public buildings there, and cigarette advertising is banned from TV until after 9 p.m. Despite this energetic government campaign, cigarette sales rose 5% last year to a record $3 billion, and Britons spent more for smokes than for bread, milk and eggs put together.