Tobacco Company considered making Tobacco candy
05/23/99
Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. once considered making tobacco-based lollipops and other candies with nicotine at the same time the industry claimed it was trying to make smoking unattractive to kids, a formerly secret document shows.
The idea was among several novel tobacco product proposals to emerge during an October 1992 brainstorming session by executives at Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., according to a memo quoted by the Saint Paul Pioneer Press on Sunday. Others included a wafer bread product, ``foam tobacco; sponge or cotton candy like product,'' a fruit roll-up, tea, a paper stick resembling a lollipop, a ``chew stick,'' tobacco spice to sprinkle on food, a ``tobacco-derived salted snack'' and a tobacco pill. The company also looked at an ``asthma inhaler-like product,'' a nicotine nasal spray, chewing tobacco that didn't have to be spit out, tobacco toothpicks and an ``atomizer activated by sucking.'' It also considered tobacco lotion, perfume and aftershave. Brown & Williamson spokesman Mark Smith said the memo just reflects some "dumb ideas'' floated in the kind of freewheeling brainstorming in which any corporation might indulge -- and that management never let those ideas reach the marketplace.