In 1983, five years before the surgeon general declared that nicotine was an addictive substance, researchers for Philip Morris drew the same conclusion. Their paper was accepted for publication in a scientific journal, but the company forced the author to withdraw it, the journal's editor said on Thursday.
The study, which tested addiction in rats, was done by Dr. Victor J. DeNoble and his colleagues, and was to be published in the journal Psychopharmacology.Experts on nicotine and addiction said the paper would have been the first and best of its kind at the time, an important addition to the research on the addictive properties of nicotine.
Dr. Jack E. Henningfield, chief of clinical pharmacology research at the National Institute on Drug Addiction, said the withdrawal of the paper "set the field back six years at least before work like it could be accomplished by Canadian researchers."
The paper was released Thursday at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment by its chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. It resulted from research at the Philip Morris Research Center in Richmond. Not long after DeNoble wrote the paper, and the company forced him to withdraw it, he left the company and, Waxman said, the research group that produced it was closed down.
Philip Morris executives issued a written statement saying that DeNoble's research in general had not been censored, and some studies of nicotine by him were published, but they would not comment on the specific paper released by Waxman.
Waxman said that because Philip Morris owned the laboratory and the researchers were its employees, all the research was owned by the company. He said there was probably no legal requirement that the company publish the study, but there was a moral requirement to do so.
The editor of the journal at the time, Dr. Herbert Barry of the University of Pittsburgh, said it was highly unusual for a paper to be accepted and then withdrawn. He said he had not come forward before now because he considered it a confidential matter, but he agreed to confirm the facts once approached by the Food and Drug Administration and Waxman.
Tobacco companies still maintain that nicotine is not addictive, although leading groups, including the surgeon general's office, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, have said that it meets all the scientific tests for an addicting substance. Other substances that meet the tests include heroin, cocaine and alcohol.