Just imagine. No more smoke rings. Or ashtrays. Or stale, lingering tobacco odor. Or spilled ashes and crushed butts. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, America's No. 2 cigarette company, announced last week that it could make a "smokeless" cigarette. "We think we have something here that's on the leading edge," declared Edward Horrigan, the chairman of Reynolds, a division of RJR Nabisco. If all goes as planned, production and test marketing could begin as early as this winter.
The product was designed to mollify nonsmokers, and clean up an industry image that has been tarred by the growing antismoking movement. Horrigan did not actually claim that Reynolds had invented a safe cigarette, only a "cleaner" one. Since the cigarette does not actually burn, he explained, it does not produce some of the compounds in tobacco smoke, like tar, that have been cited as health hazards. But medical experts are not convinced. Says Karen Monaco, a program manager at the American Lung Association: "Anything that you light up and inhale is hazardous to your lungs."
The experimental product is lighted just like a regular cigarette, but the tobacco is not actually burned, only warmed. The tip contains a tiny carbon heat source. When the smoker inhales, the warmed air is drawn across a "flavor capsule" composed of certain ingredients (Reynolds, for competitive reasons, will not identify them) and wrapped in ordinary tobacco. The air then passes through two filters. The first is made of a tobacco blend that is designed to cool the air, and the second is a standard synthetic-fiber filter. There is no smoke twisting upward from the tip, and no ash. The exhaled smoke dissipates quickly, like steam, with no tobacco smell. Once the carbon tip is used up, the cigarette extinguishes itself, in roughly the same amount of time it takes a typical king-size cigarette to burn down.
By pioneering the smokeless cigarette, Reynolds hopes to regain the industry lead it lost in 1983 to Philip Morris, which makes Marlboro. Reynolds, maker of Winston and Salem, now has 33% of U.S. cigarette sales (total market: $15.1 billion), compared with 38% for Philip Morris. But last week's announcement may have been the starting gun in a race for the smokeless market. Philip Morris, along with American Brands, which sells Pall Mall, and Lorillard, the makers of Kent, are all believed to have the technology needed to rival Reynolds.
The new product fired the debate between health officials and the tobacco industry. Since the smokeless cigarette still contains nicotine and gives off carbon monoxide, antismoking activists insist it is as dangerous as ordinary cigarettes. Experts are also concerned about the contents of the flavor capsule. Says Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, executive director of the American Council on Science and Health: "How can they claim they took out the harmful elements when we don't know what causes the harm?"
Reynolds claims the new model improves on the old in some obvious ways. Although not strictly smokeless, the product is designed to reduce the amount of smoke sharply enough to avoid irritating nonsmokers nearby. The familiar litter of discarded cigarette butts would vanish -- although it might be replaced by the litter of entire cigarettes. The heated tip comes wrapped in specially treated paper, so that it is less likely than a regular cigarette to ignite surfaces if it falls.