Nicotine "Manipulation": Defendants Have Falsely Denied That They Can and

Do Control the Level of Nicotine Delivered In Order to Create and Sustain Addiction 1366. As demonstrated in the previous Section, Defendants have long known that nicotine

¶creates and sustains an addiction to smoking and that cigarette sales, and ultimately tobacco company profits, depend on creating and sustaining that addiction. Section V(B)(3), supra. Given the importance of nicotine to the ultimate financial health of Defendants, they have undertaken extensive research into how nicotine operates within the human body and how the physical and chemical design parameters of cigarettes influence the delivery of nicotine to smokers. Using the knowledge produced by that research, Defendants have designed their cigarettes to precisely control nicotine delivery levels and provide doses of nicotine sufficient to create and sustain addiction. At the same time, Defendants have concealed much of their nicotine-related research, and have continuously and vigorously denied their efforts to control nicotine levels and delivery.

Defendants, individually, jointly, and through third parties, have extensively studied smoking intake and inhalation, compensation, addiction physiology, smoker psychology, the pharmacological aspects of nicotine, the effects of nicotine on brain waves, and related subjects. As a result of this research, cigarette company Defendants have been aware for decades that cigarettes are addictive and that smoking addiction is caused primarily by the delivery of dependence-producing levels of nicotine.
The typical cigarette contains far more nicotine than an individual will inhale as he or she smokes. Farone WD, 86:16-19; Henningfield WD, 35:16-36:16. Every aspect of a cigarette is precisely tailored to ensure that a cigarette smoker can pick up virtually any cigarette on the market and obtain an addictive dose of nicotine. Farone WD, 3:12-22. Most cigarettes are manufactured using reconstituted tobacco material, additives, burn accelerants, ash conditioners, and buffering substances, all of which affect nicotine levels and delivery. Other cigarette design features used by Defendants to control nicotine delivery include filter design, paper selection and perforation, ventilation holes, leaf blending, and use of additives (such as ammonia) to control the PH of cigarette smoke.

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During the 1960s and 1970s, the public health community urged development of low-tar cigarettes as a healthier alternative to the "full-flavored" cigarettes which then dominated the market. In response, cigarette company Defendants developed low-tar cigarettes. They then falsely maintained that nicotine levels were inextricably linked to tar levels, and that nicotine levels would, of necessity, proportionately fall, as fast and as far as the tar levels in the newer low-tar cigarettes.
In the early 1970s, the Federal Trade Commission developed a machine to measure tar and nicotine levels. Even though it became the accepted mechanism for taking such measurements, it became widely known in both the public health community and by the cigarette company Defendants that the FTC method did not accurately measure the amounts of nicotine and tar which a smoker actually ingested. Cigarette company Defendants, with the benefit of their much more sophisticated understanding of smoker compensation, as well as their knowledge of nicotine control, then intentionally developed and marketed cigarettes which, in actuality, delivered higher levels of nicotine than those measured by the FTC method. Those levels of nicotine were sufficient to create and sustain addiction in smokers.

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