The first puff is different, every smoker knows.
There's the flare of the flame, the hiss of charring tobacco and the first slightly dizzying thrill of nicotine in the throat.
And there's half of the cigarette's formaldehyde and one of its cancer-causing tars.
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Getting the right mix of addictive nicotine and toxic smoke compounds to keep smokers taking that first puff, and all the others, is at the core of a secretive, multimillion-dollar research effort largely done in Richmond.
At Philip Morris USA's downtown Center for Research and Technology that opened last year -- the city's single biggest corporate investment -- researchers are seeking a future for an industry branded by U.S. and U.N. agencies as the world's deadliest public-health menace.
The researchers are doing groundbreaking work by looking at the glowing tip of a cigarette. They're looking at whether they can tweak the ingredients of smoke with tiny bits of fiber, plastics, metal and gels inside cigarettes and filters. And they're looking at ways of getting people nicotine without burning tobacco.
"I think Philip Morris is likely the smartest tobacco company, and they take, for an American business, a very long-term perspective," said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.
Research and development is key to Philip Morris' strategy, said Jack Nelson, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Altria Group, Philip Morris' corporate parent.
Philip Morris doesn't expect its research to produce a safer cigarette anytime soon, or to lead the company away from the steadily shrinking market for tobacco. But its research effort makes clear that the country's biggest cigarette-maker intends to be in the tobacco business -- making cigarettes, cigars and smokeless tobacco -- for the long haul.
"Our research is about finding products our adult consumers might choose," Nelson said.
It is an effort Philip Morris rarely discusses, but financial analysts estimate the company spends more than $100 million a year on it.
"This is not about industry concern for public health but rather hard-nosed business: How does an industry continue to operate when its products are now recognized as inherently harmful?" said Kelley Lee, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine of the University of London, who is an expert on tobacco-control issues.
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A Richmond Times-Dispatch review of thousands of pages of patent records, government permits and scientific journals shows some of what Philip Morris' research focuses on:
-- microscopic particles of metals -- smaller than four one-millionths of an inch -- that might neutralize toxins in burning tobacco leaf;
-- gels and beads of silica to put in filters or tobacco to absorb toxins;
-- tubes, tiny cones, meshes and other plastic shapes for filters to make it easier to ventilate and dilute smoke while still allowing a full dose of nicotine;
-- gelatin strips that can be put in the mouth to release nicotine. "I do expect cigarette firms to continue to pursue nicotine-delivery products that do not involve setting tobacco on fire, at least for some more time, because the demand potential is substantial for them," Rajeev K. Goel, an Illinois State University economist who focuses on tobacco-control issues, said when asked about the Times-Dispatch review of patents.
Philip Morris researchers have experimented with strips of tobacco encased in gelatin or gum that dissolve in a user's mouth. Some involve tobacco particles only three one-thousandths of an inch wide.
Still other researchers have applied for patents for pouches of fabric or paper that hold tobacco in the mouth.
"These products are also directly responding to the increasing adoption worldwide of bans on smoking in public places, and of course the need to attract new customers," Lee said.
Philip Morris also is working on inhalers, but it says the devices aren't intended to replace cigarettes.
"You have to be careful reading too much into patents," Nelson said.
The Philip Morris inhaler work has focused on devices that release sprays of droplets or particles far smaller than what's now on the market -- as small as one ten-thousandth of an inch, or one-tenth to one-twentieth the size of the smallest now available.
The inhalers are powered by tiny pumps to deliver their mists deeper into the lungs, and patents cover precise dosage meters and sensors to coordinate delivery of the mist with a user's inhaled breath. One is for a disposable inhaler.
Philip Morris scientists, with their basic interest in smoke, have looked for many years at how heat moves tiny airborne particles.
That led to devices that create fine mists with heat. The company thought it might license the technique and market it to pharmaceutical firms as an inhaler. It shut down the subsidiary marketing the idea three years ago, but it still is filing applications to patent inhalers -- six in the past two years.
"This isn't a substitute for a cigarette," Nelson said.
He said that while inhalers could deliver nicotine, smokers want things other than nicotine -- a view some public-health officials agree with -- that they get from tobacco smoke or tobacco placed in their mouths.
"Our products are tobacco products," he said.
There already are plenty of products that deliver nicotine by itself, such as smoking-cessation aids, and "that's a bit of a crowded space now," he said.
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The issue with oral tobacco products is whether they will be meant as alternatives to cigarettes or as ways for smokers to cope in a world where it is increasingly difficult to find a place to smoke, Goel said.
"If I were them, I'd say the cigarette business is terrifically profitable but it is on the decline, so we want to wring every dollar we can during the decline," added Glantz, the University of California professor.
Philip Morris is just beginning to sell smokeless-tobacco products in test markets. Also, the company announced this year that it would buy UST, the top manufacturer of moist snuff, for more than $10 billion.
Gregory N. Connolly, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, says oral tobacco and inhalers, in addition to being options when smokers can't light up, could let people fine-tune their nicotine hits and may lead nonsmokers to experiment.
Oral tobacco presents a major challenge that Connolly believes is at the most secret center of Philip Morris' research: finding the right dose of nicotine.
Smokeless tobacco can deliver more nicotine, but it does so to tissues that don't absorb it as quickly as the lungs do with smoking, he said. Some smokers find that the dose is so large that it makes them feel ill.
But the right amount of nicotine isn't the only issue, Connolly said. Some of what satisfies smokers is the smoke itself. When more effective filters eliminate one or another smoke ingredients, they can filter out something smokers want, even if it is bad for them.
He believes that a lot of Philip Morris' most essential research -- in areas such as blending tobacco and modifying sugar levels, menthol and other flavorings -- will never emerge in patent filings or research papers.
"They're always changing Marlboro," he said.
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Some changes could be more dramatic than new flavorings or tweaking blends, patent records show.
One such change turns cigarette design on its head. Beginning in the 1950s, cigarette-makers started tinkering with filters. They began working in the middle, on the tobacco rod, after the U.S. government demanded warning labels on cigarettes in 1964, with a new focus on blends, additives and the use of "expanded tobacco" -- bits of leaf that have been puffed up the way grains are for some breakfast cereals.
But they hadn't really focused on the tip.
Now, though, Philip Morris scientists in Richmond believe that putting a tiny plug of pure burley tobacco -- the smaller, sharper-tasting leaf from Kentucky and Southwest Virginia -- or a deposit of ammonium salts right at the tip of a cigarette could cut that first jolt of toxic formaldehyde and aromatic hydrocarbons.
Tiny pellets of metal, oxides and hydroxides -- as small as one ten-thousandth of an inch wide -- are another major area of interest. Philip Morris researchers have taken out eight patents for these in recent years.
The idea is that tiny particles of iron, cobalt, platinum or gold will combine with carbon monoxide, a deadly gas contained in smoke, as well as nitric oxide and other poisons to make less harmful compounds.
The patent filings suggest the tiny pellets could be mixed into the cigarette tobacco or be part of the cigarette's paper wrapping or filter.
Another Philip Morris researcher has designed discs, rings, ribbons, meshes and balls of magnetized material to be put into cigarettes to attract smoke particles.
But tobacco-control advocates warn that removing one or two noxious ingredients in smoke doesn't necessarily make smoke safer. Toxicology tests suggest that sometimes such filtered smoke can be more toxic, Connolly said.
In a major re-engineering, another Philip Morris researcher in Richmond has suggested a cigarette with a tube, forming a hollow core up the middle, as a way to move heat to release flavorings or other additives placed in the filter.
Filters themselves remain a major thrust of research efforts. One central focus is to get in more air to dilute smoke. The challenge is to keep that from diluting the nicotine and flavors smokers want. But even if smoke is diluted, it remains a serious health risk, health advocates say.
Researchers have experimented with tiny tubes and meshes and plastic bits inside heavily ventilated filters. They are meant to narrow the streams of ventilated smoke inhaled, so that the force the smoker needs to inhale is the same as for traditional cigarettes.
Decades of intensive tobacco industry research into the physics and chemistry of burning cigarettes -- most of it kept secret from smokers for years because it made clear the hazards of smoking -- show that they produce complex, ever-changing stews of chemicals and particles.
Research has yet to show a way to cut the risk of smoking.
"I'm not so sure they are doing it just so they can look like they're reducing risk; I don't know that the PR they get is worth it," said Kathleen Dachille, a law professor at the University of Maryland who tracks Philip Morris' push for Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco, a position that is unique for the industry.
"But if they are the first ones out with a reduced-risk product with the FDA imprimatur, they will hit pay dirt here." Enditem
