The disclosure revives one of the most bitter controversies in the nation's cigarette wars and comes as yet another blow to the beleaguered cigarette industry. Last week, another manufacturer, the Liggett Group, admitted that nicotine is addictive and that the industry markets to underage smokers in an historic legal settlement.
The FTC, which enforces truth-in-advertising laws, declined to say what new evidence has become available. "There is new evidence from 1994," said Victoria Streitfeld, the agency's spokesperson. "I cannot talk about what that is."
But experts in tobacco litigation said the Food and Drug Administration's effort to regulate cigarette advertising, as well as state lawsuits against the industry, have recently yielded confidential documents that could bolster an FTC case against Reynolds, the nation's second-largest cigarette manufacturer.
"There are internal documents that have come out that indicate R.J. Reynolds had begun in the early 1970s to become ... envious of Philip Morris because Marlboro had a lock on the kiddie market," said Dick Daynard, a tobacco litigation expert.
Dr. D.W. Powell of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, chair of a 2 1/2-day conference that drew 1,600 doctors and researchers from around the country, said that "a good portion" of the estimated 4 million Americans who have chronic hepatitis C do not know they are carriers of the virus.
"But we do know it is transmitted by high-risk practices such as drug use and high-risk sexual activity. Those people should consider being tested," he said.
Hepatitis C is primarily transmitted by blood-to-blood contact, such as sharing needles for drugs, although a percentage of cases are believed to be transmitted sexually. Blood transfusions that occurred before 1990, when a screen for the virus began to be used for blood donors, also were a major source of infection.
One of the issues the panel tackled is the fact that there are no sure-fire tests for hepatitis C.
The suits charge that the law violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution by specifically targeting a particular group and stripping them of federal benefits that are provided to every other legal resident who meets the basic criteria of the programs.