End of the Tar Derby

In the last decade, sales of filter cigarettes have leaped from less than 1% to more than half of all U.S. cigarettes sold. Filters rescued the industry from a skid six years ago when the first cancer-cigarette studies were widely publicized, helped sell a record 456 billion cigarettes last year. They also touched off a heated controversy on their advertising claims of reduced tar and nicotine. Last week FTC Chairman Earl W. Kintner announced that all cigarette makers had agreed to end the tar derby by dropping claims to filter effectiveness, taking the health pitch out of their ads.

Kintner's announcement ended a long struggle by the FTC to clarify the benefit of filters for the baffled smoker. An FTC request in 1952 for an injunction to stop health-claim tobacco advertisements was blocked when the U.S. District Court ruled that cigarettes are not a "drug." Later the FTC suggested certain guide lines to assist the companies in documenting their claims, but let them use their own testing laboratories until the commission was able to develop a standard tar-and-nicotine test. The FTC never was able to establish a standard amid the welter of laboratory tests.

Last fall the commission decided the time had come to persuade the tobacco companies to agree to their own ceasefire. For one thing, filter pitches were losing their appeal because conflicting claims were nullifying one another. And there was the example of Winston, consistently the bestselling filter, which had never used the health puff. One of the early entrants in the low-tar derby, Kent switched its main theme to "filters best for the flavor you like."

What really brought on the new ground rules was an aggressive campaign introducing the new filter brand Life last fall, which resulted in a formal FTC complaint against Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. for false filter advertising claims. The Life ads convinced the FTC something had to be done for the industry as a whole, and the formal complaint convinced the cigarette makers that it would be prudent to agree to end the filter derby. Said Kintner gratefully, noting that cigarette advertisers spend $190 million a year: "It is no small feat for them to change the major emphasis of a number of brands."

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