NOW that tobacco experts at RJR Nabisco claim to have devised a new, improved "smokeless" cigarette, it is instructive to recall what happened the last time such an invention was foisted on the public.
The time was 1988 and RJR Nabisco's CEO, F. Ross Johnson, was trying to find a way to boost the price of his company's stock. Here's an excerpt from "Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco," by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar:
"There were other ways to boost the stock price, of course. Johnson had high hopes for the smokeless cigarette, Premier, which was due in test markets by fall. Premier had been wheeled out for public display the previous September in an elaborate press conference at New York's Grand Hyatt Hotel. Rumors swept the stock market the week before that the company was developing a revolutionary new cigarette, and the stock had shot up three points. . . [Reynolds Tobacco chief Ed] Horrigan took the message to financial analysts. 'Simply put,' a beaming Horrigan declared, 'we think this will be the world's cleanest cigarette.' "
But he had not mentioned some problems. "Horrigan's people, in fact, hadn't wanted to introduce the product so soon -- it was far from market-ready -- but their hand had been forced. For one thing, Premier was flunking its taste tests. In its U.S. research laboratories, Reynolds scientists found that fewer than 5 percent of smokers liked its taste. . . It had a very basic problem for a cigarette: It tasted awful if lit by a match instead of a lighter. The sulfur in a match reacted badly with Premier's carbon tip. It also made it smell awful. . . If all that weren't bad enough, the cigarette was hard to draw on -- darned hard. Inside the company, they called it 'the hernia effect.' "
Premier proved a fiasco for the company. Will history repeat itself?