Nicotine fits

Bennett LeBow is Big Tobacco’s worst nightmare. He’s not a crusading class-action lawyer, an outspoken public health official or a courageous research chemist. He’s a financier who owns, among other things, a cigarette company.

The Miami-based buyout specialist, a self-described maverick, bought the tiny cigarette manufacturer Liggett Group (Liggett accounts for less than 2 percent of U.S. sales with such fringe brands as Pyramid, Tourney and Eve) in 1986. In the mid-’90s, he caused his industry fits by settling state smoking lawsuits out of court, admitting his product was addictive and causes cancer, and turning over revealing industry documents on scientific research and marketing practices.

Now, in a move that has his industry downright apoplectic, he wants to make cigarettes that aren’t addictive and don’t cause cancer. These “safer” cigarettes, to be called Omni Free, will be made from genetically engineered tobacco that has no nicotine and is virtually free of the most potent carcinogens found in tobacco. The Omni Free customer will still have bad breath and perhaps a hacking cough, but at least smoking will be more of an annoying habit than a raging addiction and smoking-related illness not such a leading cause of early death for smokers or so staggeringly costly to society.

Which of course has Mr. LeBow’s colleagues in the industry very worried. So worried, in fact, that they’re trying to make his tobacco – not all tobacco, just his – illegal. Liggett’s parent company, Vector Group, already has plans and approval to grow this new tobacco in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi and intended to manufacture and package the cigarettes in North Carolina. That is, until the industry giants convinced their friends in the North Carolina Legislature to require anyone who wants to possess any amount of Vector’s tobacco – whether a manufacturer, a corner store or an individual – to post a $1 million bond with the state. Failure to do so is a criminal offense, punishable by imprisonment.

Big Tobacco’s view, expressed through its legislators/spokesmen, is that Vector’s genetically engineered tobacco could, even if already cut and dried, contaminate “natural” tobacco and thus expose smokers to unknown risks, a concern that is truly heartwarming. Mr. LeBow says he’ll build his plant elsewhere and get Omni Free on the store shelves as planned in 2002. It’s impossible to predict how such a product will do in the marketplace, but he’s already a roaring success at tormenting an industry that richly deserves it.