Project XA – The Safe Cigarette You Never Heard Of--Story Of Corporate Greed and Power

Ugly history of corporate greed, fear and profit over consumers.
L&M cigarette tobacco company came up with a safer smoke. But fear of selling a safer smoke would make for a hot and fast litigation by a mislead public lead to the burying of this safer product.
Also rumored threats from the other tobacco Co's that L&M had a gentleman's agreement with that required all to keep their yappers shut about the health consequences of using their products killed the safer smoke.

Looking for a way to keep selling cigarettes after finding facts about cancer and smoking, L&M did the right thing, came up with a safer smoke.

How It All Started

(Dr.) Mold began working in 1955 as a scientist for Liggett & Myers, a tobacco company in North Carolina. His role was to identify cancer causing ingredients in cigarette smoke that lab mice were exposed to. Working alongside other scientists, Mold found the materials that caused cancer on the skin of lab mice and started a project to make a safer cigarette that would exclude or minimise these harmful ingredients.

So L&M came up with a cigarette that contained palladium to complete the combustion process, and greatly reduce the danger of smoking. Hurrrrraaaaayyy!

Liggett hired the A.D. Little Company to try and replicate the mouse-skin painting tests carried out by Ernst L. Wynder in the 1950s that resulted in tumors being produced. Little was able to replicate the test and its results. Shortly after, Liggett started to pursue a safer cigarette.

Project XA, which was headed by James D. Mold, involved adding palladium nitrate to tobacco, which decreased the total tumoricenicity of the smoke without leaving a residual level of palladium in the blood stream when tested on animals.[1]

But profits got in the way.

The palladium additive worked as a catalyst, resulting in more thorough combustion of the byproducts of burned tobacco, much like palladium spark plugs cause more thorough combustion of gasoline in a car engine. The result was smoke that contained fewer tumorigenic substances than a traditional cigarette.

Liggett carried the project to completion, and by 1978 had stocked large amounts of palladium to start commercial manufacture of the cigarettes. Ultimately Liggett pulled the plug on the project, allegedly due to threats from other tobacco companies. The companies allegedly threatened to pull the industry's jointly-funded defense from Liggett if they should market the XA cigarette, amid the fear that such a safer product would indict all other "traditional cigarettes" as being unsafe.

So what should we do if we can't sell these safer smokes because all the tobacco companies will get sued. Let hide it!!!!

In the end, after spending an estimated $10million on the project, Liggett buried all traces of it in the sand. From 1975 onwards, all internal meetings associated with Project XA had to be attended to by a company lawyer, which shows clearly how worried the tobacco company was about the safety of their products.

www.sourcewatch.org...
www.simplyeliquid.co.uk...

Vape on!

That's all I have to say for now.....

Even with Palladium as an ingredient, smoking isn't "safe". Although it seems like full combustion is better, I am certain that adding more elements to an already dangerous product is no where near safe for human lungs to inhale. The addiction is what they are after.

Big Tobacco is a huge industry that has its share of scandals.
Not to discount Mold's efforts here, because at least he tried. It's quite obvious that major tobacco companies don't want anyone fooling with their profits.

I have to argue that most major corporations work this same way. Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big schoolbooks (yup) and a host of others.


Good read.

a reply to: havok

Sadly this is where our elected officials are supposed to work for us. But elections are always coming up and there needs to be $$$$ to run again. So who wins this battle, big corps do.

a reply to: baddmove

I agree with you on this one. Vape has now taken over as the "safer" alternative to smoking, chewing nic gum, or even prescription meds. And people are PISSED!

This post is bias because I've been off cigs for 5 year now because of vaping. I've also reduced my nic level from 24% to 6% on my way to zero.

But the vape industry is under the same attack as the OP. E-cigs were actually banned in 2009 by the FDA before being reinstated. Just last year there were 6 major decisions by Congress on Vaping, and there is more to come this year. They even want to raise the taxes on juice (made from food grade product) over 2000%! Cake is bad for you, and is made from food grade product, so should your birthday cake have a 2000% tax hike as well?

Big tobacco is not happy.

Quit smoking, screw em all
vape a bit, ween down the nicotine, then quit that also (lord know what the end result of long term vaping will be..best not to be the gunea pig) and move to gum.

I would have loved a non harmful smoke, but unless its literally healthy for you, then its simply lighting up money for no actual benefit (outside of just ceremonial and a way to curb appetite)

a reply to: seasonal
The old newspaper article linked to at the Sourcewatch link mentions that Dr. Mold worked for the U.S. government working on shellfish toxins... I wonder if he had anything to do with that whole debacle that led to the Church committee.

Palladium, a heavy metal, and magnesium nitrate (providing nitrosamines), also a carcinogen, additives? Yeah, that's a great idea. Supposedly the palladium didn't move into the test mice bodies and the nitrates were at a comparable level to other brands so it wasn't a big deal. They knew it wouldn't do anything about heart disease or emphysema.

Solve one problem, create another.

The big problem though was that making the XA would mean actually saying the non-treated cigarettes were more unsafe and that's a no-no. Its an interesting story but overall near nothing is mentioned about the removal of the tons of additives put into cigarettes that really don't even need to be there. There's even high fructose corn syrup in cigarettes these days because that's necessary...

It is my belief that the tobacco industry doesn't actually want a safe cigarette but I just don't trust them. Switched to vaping two years ago. Will eventually quit when they take the awesome flavors away and will never go back to smoking.

I mean, I'm vaping a banana split right now. That's wonderful and big tobacco hates it but that's a story for another thread. Thanks for this one, interesting stuff.

a reply to: Noncents

I wish I was surprised to hear the US govt was messing with shell fish toxins. It is so weird all the crap that the military industrial complex/govt has it's fat little piggy's in.

Just smoke those organic American Spirits that don't contain any additives except organic tobacco. *shrug*

I'm sure there's a "conspiracy" around those too. I hear they're owned by big tobacco anyway, so they're probably just lying about the no additives or something.

a reply to: Kettu

The only reason they would lie is if there is a profit to be made.

Makes me wonder how many other products are out there that are making a mess of us.

originally posted by: Kettu
Just smoke those organic American Spirits that don't contain any additives except organic tobacco. *shrug*

I'm sure there's a "conspiracy" around those too.

You know, not that I've ever heard. I did smoke those for a while when they were sold locally but a lot of stores around my house stopped carrying them and I had to drive a bit to get them. The one store that still had them also had unfiltered Lucky Strikes too so I usually ended up with those because they're great. Horrible for sure but great for short smoke breaks at work.

American Spirit is owned by R.J. Reynolds. The FDA did crack down on them a few years ago for their advertising too. Same situation as the XA, they aren't allowed to say that less additives means a safer smoke. Even if it is, slightly, a little tiny bit, true.

Look at the e-juice laws last year and still incoming. Same thing. Unless its been stopped by now you can get a fine for saying it's safer than a cigarette. The vape regulation laws are legitimately insane. If you have a bottle of vegetable glycerine and intend to vape it then it must be labeled as a tobacco product, even if it contains no nicotine, tobacco, or tobacco derived ingredients. That's insane but big tobacco has a death grip on the industry and is working to stop vaping because they failed when they tried to get in the arena. If they would just update their game plan they could be at the top of the chain but no. Instead they'd rather try to crush the opposition with absurd regulation. And its working.

The FDA is the real issue here. Tobacco by itself doesn't kill you, nicotine by itself doesn't kill you. The 4000+ chemicals the FDA forces tobacco companies to put into the cigarettes are what kills you. The FDA is the single most damaging thing to human health in the world.

I wonder how much the addition of palladium would add to the cost of a pack of cigarettes. Palladium is not cheap - current spot price is about $753 an ounce. That's about 1/3 the price of gold.

a reply to: Shadoefax

Good question, I can't imagine there is too much in each smoke. But it would be an added cost, so corps would hate to do this.

I wonder why no company has done this if it is so safe?

I quit smokin and wouldn't have been able to do it if it weren't for vapes. I quit on 6% nic and got down to 0% within two weeks (that's almost like cold turkey quitting). I wasn't addicted to the nicotine so much as the feeling of inhaling a smokey substance, and the general habit of smoking after a meal, smoking after a car trip, ya know! Queues!

I don't vape anymore, but I just can't see any other way to do it while still inhaling a smokey substance!

There's no way in heck that safer smoke was really that much safer. You're still inhaling burned up chemicals and tobacco.

there are a lot of those lost thecnologies
all of them are the fault of corrupt oil moguls