Smoldering Anger

April 26, 2006

Even if you’ve never smoked in your life, it’s still breathtaking to hear Victor DeNoble’s story about taking on the multi-billion dollar tobacco industry.
It sounds like a good spy novel. Think black covered windows,  rat murders, betrayal, and FBI debriefings in an underground warehouse. 
Victor DeNoble will arrive in Traverse City on April 30 for a six-day speaking stint on cigarettes and nicotine (see box for details), plus he’ll be presenting at 14 local schools. But before he made a living as a national speaker crusading against
the cigarette companies, he used to work for one.
DeNoble was hired in 1980 by Philip Morris at the age of 26. He signed a secrecy agreement, never realizing its significance until years later.
As a behavioral scientist specializing in addiction, his job was to develop a no-nicotine cigarette that was still tasty and addictive, but wouldn’t cause the heart and stroke deaths like nicotine does.
He succeeded, initially to accolades by senior management. But ultimately, his success was his downfall.  Philip Morris shut his lab down one day, ordered him to kill the lab rats, and sent he and his lab partner to an empty office and told them to look for another job. That would have been the end of the story except that DeNoble never forgave the cigarette company.
“You’re a young scientist, you’re doing something to save people’s lives and they pulled the plug. They chose profit over people’s lives. 
“At that point, Philip Morris and I became mortal enemies. If there was an alternative cigarette out on the shelves now, do you realize how many people’s lives would have been saved?”

ENERGIZED
DeNoble, now 56, tells his story about 200 times a year to schoolchildren and adults. But his voice is as energized, rapid-fire, and indignant as it was 12 years ago when he testified before Congress in the now-famous 1994 hearings when the executives, none of whom earned less than $2,000 an hour, testified that nicotine wasn’t addicting (Does it remind you of the global warming controversy now?).
If you have any questions about the power of money in this country, his story will at once enlighten and scare you.
As a specialist in addiction, DeNoble took the job at the Philip Morris facility in Richmond, Virginia at a time when 62% of American adults and teens smoked (now it’s less than 26%). DeNoble worked in secrecy with lab partner Paul Mele and a small staff. The windows were painted black and rats were delivered to the lab before the other employees arrived to work or after they left. For the first two years, DeNoble wasn’t allowed to tell anyone that animals were even in the building.
His research on the rats showed not only that nicotine is addictive, but even more so when combined with another smoke component called acetaldehyde. In fact, a colleague could accurately predict sales of a cigarette brand simply by its concentration of nicotine and acetaldehyde. Philip Morris was excited by the research and explored the idea of pursuing the ideal chemical ratio outside of company walls.
In November of 1983, DeNoble demonstrated to the company president and a company attorney how rats would press a lever for nicotine, proving the addictive qualities of the drug. The lawyer exploded: “Dammit, you’ve made us into a pharmaceutical company!”

UNSAFE CIGS
At the same time, tobacco executives began rethinking the wisdom of developing a safer cigarette; doing so would imply that cigarettes were unsafe. Yet the alternative cigarette, devised by Mele and DeNoble, was showing great promise.
“We put filters on it that removed 80 percent of cancer producing agents.  Would it have been safe? Absolutely not. Would it have saved lives, improved the quality of lives? Yes.”
They sent the prototype cigarette to Bill Farone, director of new product development. He assessed that it was not only possible to manufacture a cigarette with the less deadly alternative, but practical. That’s when the lawyers stepped in.
“We were in Richmond, and all of a sudden I come up with a safer molecule. The lawyers said, ‘Holy crap, you made us into a drug industry. You can’t put a synthetic drug into a cigarette. You’ll get us regulated. If you’re now saying nicotine is killing people, that means we’ve been lying to the government for 30 years.’
“The scientists who hired us didn’t think this through. And in order for them to keep their jobs, they’re the ones who fired me.”
In January of 1984, high-paid lawyers monitored the scientists’ work, and four months later, the laboratory was shut down.
“On April 5, 1984, we were told, it’s now 3:10 p.m., go downstairs, kill the rats, turn over the keys and leave the building.”
The executives called a company meeting and told employees that DeNoble and Mele were gone, period. Ask no questions.  “Not one scientist stood up in the building and said, ‘This is the wrong thing to do. We’re killing people,”’DeNoble said. But later, an employee did warn DeNoble that a private detective had been hired to follow him.
Company officials told DeNoble before he left that he was bound by his  secrecy agreement; his testimony would be worthless in court. But before he left the company, he took the opportunity to secret away his research in a van. 
DeNoble later sought out an attorney and gave him the documents to review. He never saw the papers again. The attorney was on the Philip Morris payroll.
Ten years after he was fired, DeNoble heard that tobacco executives from the seven major tobacco companies agreed to testify before Congress.  DeNoble mailed a single incriminating slide (which his wife had luckily kept in a desk drawer) to the FBI with his fingerprint on it, but no name. (He did not sign his name because of the secrecy agreement he’d signed)
DeNoble mailed the slide on a Monday. On Thursday he received a call from the FBI, who figured he was the source.  One tip-off: a colleague of DeNoble’s had given Dr. David Kessler, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, his 1982 paper on nicotine addiction.

THE INSIDER
FBI agents took DeNoble to an underground warehouse to debrief him on what he knew about nicotine addiction.  Later President Clinton called him to reassure him that he was supportive of the investigation and would personally work to get Philip Morris to revoke his secrecy agreement.
DeNoble agreed to testify at an April subcommittee hearing, but until then, the FBI feared for his life, telling him he had a high risk of getting killed before the day arrived.  Not knowing how far the tobacco industry would go, the FBI tapped his phones, filmed his house, and watched his every move.
Was DeNoble the guy who the movie, The Insider, was based? In fact, the movie seems to have combined his life-his laboratory research to develop a safer cigarette-and the story of another tobacco executive, Jeff Wigand, who worked for Brown & Williamson and did the interview on 60 Minutes.
DeNoble is gratified that his work has had a profound effect on our understanding of addiction. In retrospect, he believes that a safer cigarette carried a double edge. It would have saved lives--430,000 people a year die from lung and heart problems related to nicotine. But it also may have caused thousands to keep smoking and choosing no-nicotine cigarettes, thinking they were “safe.”
Philip Morris still owns the patent on his no-nicotine cigarette. It “made 5,000 modifications and patented all 5,000 so no one else can ever make it,” DeNoble said.

CIGARETTES ON CAMPUS
Now cigarette companies are hitting college campuses to capture new customers. Students are especially vulnerable because of the stress of exams and money, he said.
DeNoble’s current beef is with the landmark $206 billion settlement that tobacco companies agreed to pay over 25 years. (The settlement provided the companies with immunity against future lawsuits from the states involved.) But less than 10 percent of the money goes toward smoking cessation and disease control.
“The tobacco companies make about a billion dollars per day. And they’re being fined $4 or $5 billion a year. The point is it’s an irrelevant sum of money. In the tobacco settlement, there is no provision that the money goes toward prevention or treatment of disease. It often goes into the state’s general fund, so you can use it for roads, IRAs, teachers’ salaries. The last thing they’re going to put it in is health education if they can use it for infrastructure.”
Michigan allocates none of its tobacco settlement or revenue for tobacco prevention, ranking it dead last among the states in funding prevention programs.
During his speeches, statistics, facts, and advice trip easily off DeNoble’s tongue. By the age of 11, 20% of kids have smoked a full cigarette. The younger you start smoking, the harder it is to quit. Every time you take a puff, you inhale 4,700 chemicals.
Yet DeNoble admits that no amount of statistics or information can persuade anyone to quit.
“When you think about cigarettes, you have to think about drug addiction.  People who are addicted to nicotine have basically changed their brain. Until people are ready to quit, they’re not going to quit.”

Editor’s note: For those ready to quit, a seven-week “Freedom from Smoking” class starts May 9 at NMC. Call 995-1700 for more information.

‘Inside the Dark Side’

Victor DeNoble will detail the tobacco industry’s strategies to keep smokers addicted and other deceptions at the following events:
April 30: Following a smoke-themed movie at The Bay Theatre on Sunday afternoon. then he will be greeted at a reception, complete with refreshments and hors d’oeuvres, to be held at the Friendship Community Center in Suttons Bay. For specifics, call 231-271-3684, 231-271-3772 or go to www.leelanau.com/thebay .

May 2: Speech at Northport Public School Auditorium, 7pm, a small donation appreciated.

May 3: Speech at Dennos Museum, NMC, TC at 7pm, a small donation appreciated.

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