Day 166: The weight of evidence

"You can see the changing thinking as the weight of evidence is becoming more and more substantive over time."

Earlier this week, BAT's management scientist, Graham Read, referred to an increased "weight of evidence" as the reason that BAT changed its public stance from a position of casting doubt on the link between smoking and lung cancer and eventually acknowledging it in 2000.

Now in his fourth day of testimony - and second day of cross-examination - Mr. Read became the vehicle through which the plaintiffs added to their own "weight of evidence" of BAT trying to veil its scientific findings from any litigation efforts.

And by the contrast between his answers and these documents, Mr. Read made his own contributions to the "weight of evidence" against his being found a credible witness.

A very civil roughing up

In a studiously polite voice, Mr. Lespérance showed the witness a series of documents that suggested that BAT maintained a sustained effort to prevent their scientific research from becoming evidence in trials like this one.

The first of these was a memo written in the fall of 1988, just as Imperial Tobacco was preparing for a legal battle with the federal government over the constitutionality of a law banning tobacco advertising. The science department was taking steps to ensure a copy of its science database would not be held in Canada. Otherwise, "this could have serious implications in terms of discovering exercises on material held by ITL." (Exhibit 1575). (A year later, when the trial judge excluded scientific reports from discovery  - Exhibit 68, 70 -  Imperial Tobacco's legal team rejoiced at this "major victory.")

Mr. Read denied that the discovery referred to in the memo would have anything to do with litigation -- a view he repeated even though Mr. Lespérance showed him an accompanying analysis (Exhibit 1576) that cautioned: "Imperial's involvement in court proceedings would immediately implicate us should the lawyers discover that computer tapes had been received." 

The contrast between Mr. Read's version of history and the documentary record became even more dramatic when Mr. Lespérance recalled the response of Imperial Tobacco's head of science, Patrick Dunn. (Mr. Dunn has become a significant posthumous figure in this trial!)

When testifying at the U.S. Department of Justice trial, Mr. Read had been asked about document retention, and had been shown a document written by BAT's lawyers that complained "The problem is largely Pat Dunn and Roger Ackman's inability to control him." (Exhibit 1577).  Eight years later, Mr. Read seemed to have forgotten this testimony. He could not recall the document, and said he had been unaware of Pat Dunn's opposition to the policy "prior to seeing this document".

But Mr. Lespérance had additional documents which directly challenged Mr. Read's suggestions that he was unaware of Mr. Dunn's concerns. These records suggested the witness had been brought in to help resolve the disagreement between the companies (Exhibit 1578, 1579, 1580).

This is not the only Quebec court where Mr. Read has denied BAT's role in imposing rules on the science that was funded by its branch plants. Earlier this year, he prepared an affadavit for the Quebec cost recovery suit in which he said "I am not aware of any document retention policies of Imperial that may have been implemented by Imperial with respect to its R&D-related documents." (Exhibit 1581)

The two continents may indeed be divided by a common language. Mr. Read responded that his statement had nothing to do with the BAT-wide document retention policy. "You have to read the English as it is written." Apparently the "ITS" in "Its R&D-related documents" referred to documents generated within Imperial Tobacco's research department, and not those sent from BAT to Imperial.

Like the lawyers and witness before him, Justice Riordan gave no indication that Mr. Read seemed painted into a very tight corner. A jury trial would be so much more obvious in its drama!

Remember the date: 1958

At this stage of the trial, Justice Riordan frequently asks each witness a question at the very end of their testimony. His question for Mr. Read was to get a specific date at which BAT scientists adopted the working hypothesis that smoking caused cancer.

Mr. Read replied that "it was just after 1958"  and that this working hypothesis "would include Imperial from 1958."

This trial was assigned the question " Did the defendants know and were they presumed to have known about the risks and dangers associated with the use of their products?" It seemed this morning like the date 1958 had been put against the answer "yes."

Admissions

A lot of court time can be saved when lawyers concede elements of their opponent's case by way of admissions, and allow documents, affadavits or other forms of evidence to become part of the trial record without the need for a live witness.

In recent weeks, the plaintiffs have repeated their willingness to "make admissions" concerning the activities of Agriculture Canada, and to consequently cut the time of the trial by about a month. (Mr. Gaetan Duplessis was the first witness to appear on this subject. A report on his testimony, which began this afternoon, will be included in Monday's report).

But the "admissions" that were being discussed this week were those for another witness - Mr. Jean-Louis Mercier. It seems that Imperial Tobacco is no longer interested in this former president being recalled to testify. (They didn't say why they had suddenly changed their mind, but given Mr. Mercier's colourful testimony last year, some eyebrows likely went up on the plaintiff's side. )

Justice Riordan was clearly leaning on the plaintiffs to agree to substitute an admission for the two-day testimony that had been scheduled for later this month. This agreement would cancel the hearings scheduled for the week of September 23rd.

The trial resumes on Monday. Mr. Gaetan Duplessis will continue his testimony on events connected with Agriculture Canada and its development of new types of tobacco.

Day 165: Different questions, same answers

During the first two days of this week, Courtroom 1709 of Montreal's Palais de Justice has been the backdrop for a series of smooth exchanges between retired BAT scientist/manager, Graham Read, and Deborah Glendinning, the lawyer who is leading the defence for that company's Canadian operation in the Montreal tobacco trials.

Today, the plaintiffs had the opportunity to cross-examine Mr. Read. Their questions went over many of the same topics -- what BAT knew about causation and addiction, what it said about these subjects in public, what it did in response to health concerns, and how concerns about litigation influenced decision-making.

Cross-examinations are often a little rough-and-tumble, but the uber-polite tone that was set earlier in the week was maintained today. Mr. Trudel and Mr. Lespérance asked their questions in studiously respectful and gentle tones. (I don't think anyone was deceived by the diplomatic veneer, however!) Ms. Glendinning voiced few objections, which illogically contributed to the impresion that everyone was on their best behaviour.

Mis-matched answers

Mr. Read's answers were the same as they had been earlier in the week - he kept his story straight. Causation was a working hypothesis for BAT scientists for several decades - smoking is addictive but not in the sense of hard drugs - lawyers did not interfere with the work of the scientists - the responsible thing to do is to give smokers who chose to smoke a product with reduced toxins - low tar cigarettes are less harmful.

But these answers were a much less comfortable fit with the plaintiffs questions than they had been with his own lawyer's. Mr. Read often sounded confined by his "message box" and his inability to provide direct answers to clear questions made him sound evasive. (Justice Riordan, who had earlier allowed Mr. Read's vague answers and circumlocutions to go unchecked, forced a reply on a handful of occasions.)

Compare and contrast

Over the day, Mr. Trudel and Mr. Lespérance dipped into a seemingly bottomless supply of BAT documents which were inconsistent with Mr. Read's version of events. They were unsuccessful at getting him to agree with their version of events

Mr. Read said lawyers were not involved in scientific affairs. 
Then why were contentious scientific findings sent to Millbank, where BAT's lawyers were based? (Exhibit 1570) Why were lawyers deciding the response to external research? (Exhibit 107) Contributing to scientific position papers like the position paper Mr. Read contributed to for which "Shook, Hardy and Bacon ... provided most of the references and much of the analysis."(Exhibits 1573, 1573.1, 1573.2, 1573.3)

Mr. Read said BAT's reluctance to admit causation was based on its scientific considerations and not on legal concerns. 
Then why did BAT's head of science, Jim Green, write that the industry's public position on "the association of cigarette smoking and diseases is dominated by legal considerations" and urge his colleagues to see that refusing to do so was viewed as "intransigent and irresponsible"? (Exhibit 29). And why did his Canadian colleague, Bob Gibb, agree that the day when the industry could refute epidemiological conclusions of causation was "long gone." (Exhibit 125)

Mr. Read said BAT did not promote a false controversy about causation.
Then why did it repudiate its former head of research when, post-retirement, he acknowledged causation during a television documentary (Exhibit 31) And why did it continue - well into the 1990s - to distribute media lines across its companies that encouraged doubt that cigarettes caused disease? (Exhibits 976, 242)

Mr. Read said BAT/Imperial never sought to make an elastic cigarette.
Then why were ITL scientists reporting on their progress towards that goal? (Exhibit 393)

BAT's low-tar benefit

Mr. Read stuck to his guns in maintaining that low-tar cigarettes are a benefit to smokers - and maintained this view despite being reminded of a scientific consensus to the contrary. (13th Monograph of the National Cancer Institute).

He invoked the name of Richard Peto, saying that this eminent British scientist agreed with his view. He said the NCI Monograph contained "fundamental errors," including "incorrect calculations" and "incorrect assumptions with intensity."

He referred again to BAT's superior knowledge from butt studies of "how people actually smoke" and repeated that there is a real difference in actual human exposure to cigarettes of different machine deliveries.

Mr. Trudel asked whether there were any published studies which refuted the 13th monograph, either by Richard Peto or others. Mr. Read did not identify any, but suggested this was not because the criticisms were not valid, but that the time for such criticism was over: "There is nothing to comment about."

Hoist with their own petard? Evidence from the BAT web-site

There is a tradition/requirement that lawyers inform the other side about which documents they intend to use during their direct examination of witnesses, but it is a protocol that is routinely ignored. It is a rare day that goes by without complaint about documents that are shared at the last minute.

One of these last-minute documents was introduced by Ms. Glendinning at the outset of her questions for Mr. Read. It was a Memorandum submitted by BAT to a UK Commons committee in 1999, (Exhibit 20230) and was presented as part of an acknowledgement by BAT that "cigarette smoking was a cause of cancer, lung cancer, heart disease and other respiratory diseases" and cigarettes were addictive.

A number of questions were put to Mr. Read about the moment when BAT adopted this new position. Mr. Read was repeatedly vague in his replies, giving neither Ms. Glendinning nor Mr. Trudel a clear answer. When finally pushed by Justice Riordan, he suggested that it might have been in the mid 1990s.

(The question of timing is important to this trial because the class period ends with the filing of the claim in 1998. Moreover the common questions laid down for the trial include  Did the defendants implement a systematic policy of not disclosing such risks and dangers?   Did the defendants trivialise or deny such risks and dangers?)

After a few repetitions of Mr. Read's equivocation, Mr. Trudel revealed that the missing link could be found on the BAT web-site. The moment of change happened in January 2000, when the Select Committee requested clearer answers (Exhibit 1571r).

The 1999 Memorandum had given a qualified response, but in response to a push from the Committee Clerk, BAT provided a clear answer. The committee's subsequent report shows that BAT was ahead of the other companies operating in Britain, who were not yet ready to acknowledge the simple statement "smoking causes cancer."

Some interesting statements

Mr. Read gave an estimate of the number of deaths due to smoking - citing the figure of 100 deaths for every 100,000 smokers each year. He gave no source or details on the methods behind this estimate, which is much lower than those used by public health officials. (WHO gives a much higher estimate of 174 deaths per 100,000 people over 30 years of age, including non-smokers.)

He said that the risks associated with cigarettes were indeed "a matter of concern" for himself and others and that these concerns were the source of the "passion" in the research department to reduce the compounds in cigarettes.

Mr. Trudel asked him what would happen if cigarettes were not sold. "I absolutely agree that the numbers [of deaths] would probably decrease," Mr. Read replied.

Towards the end of the day, André Lespérance turned to the subject of document destruction. Justice Riordan discouraged going over-time, and Mr. Read's testimony was unexpectedly extended into Thursday. Mr. Gaeten Duplessis will also testify.

Day 164: An alternate reality

To access trial documents linked to this site, see note at the bottom of this post.

After the last two days' testimony by Graham Read at the Montreal tobacco trials, Imperial Tobacco will be hard pressed to say that Justice Riordan did not give their star scientific witness a full opportunity to present his version of history.

And what a story it was!

Unfettered by requirements to stay within the class period, within Mr. Reid's direct experience, or within other troublesome boundaries imposed on other witnesses, Ms. Deborah Glendinning was able to invite her witness to share his experiences, opinions, and interpretations of tobacco related events over the past six decades. (Philip Trudel tried sporadically, without success, to persuade Justice Riordan to give Mr. Read a leash of the same length as placed on other witnesses.)

Graham Read at
a Coresta reception 

This kid-glove treatment contributed to the feeling that Mr. Read was some kind of visiting corporate dignitary - an impression that was deepened by his plummy-voiced stories of events across the pond, and his casual dropping of names of people who sound important even though we have never heard of them before. (Lord Walton of Detchant, if you please!)

The goal of Mr. Read's testimony today - at least as it seemed to these ears - was to "explain away" some of the documents and testimony we heard over the first year of the trial. He offered Justice Riordan a radically different way of connecting the dots of tobacco history.

To try to make this happen, Ms. Glendinning took her witness through a fairly wide selection of topics and allegations - and she did so at a steady pace.

Her questions were clear and easy to follow. So clear, in fact, in the answers they were expected to prompt that Mr. Trudel objected to their leading-ness. These objections also fell on deaf ears.

The answers, however, were rarely as clear as the questions. Mr. Read's response was always mellifluous, but the content sometimes neither clear enough or loud enough for this blog to provide a reliable report on BAT's position on some very important issues. (The transcript, when it is available in the coming days, will be more useful for the purpose).

Nevertheless, the main lines of BAT's position came through loud and clear.

* By the early 1970s, BAT turned away from the "lost hope" that the harms from cigarettes could be pinned on a few removable substances, and shifted its research focus to achieving a "general reduction" in the level of all harmful substances. This goal continues to guide its work. "The most effective way to go with conventional products is to reduce everything as far as possible."

* Low-tar cigarettes are an application of this "general reduction" approach. They were and are a good idea and future epidemiology will likely vindicate the industry's efforts to lower deliveries.

* Smokers' compensation was understood by the industry as a potential threat to the benefits of low-tar cigarettes. They cautioned governments about it as soon as low-tar cigarettes were encouraged by governments. Despite these early reservations, the companies have subsequently learned that although compensation does take place, it is not enough to undermine the benefit of low-tar cigarettes. (Mr. Read cited BAT "butt studies" that demonstrate that smokers of low- medium- and high-tar cigarettes inhale differing levels of toxins, but none of the studies were tabled as evidence.)

* The idea of increasing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes relative to tar was not BAT's idea, but was presented by health researcher. (Michael Russell's name was cited on many occasions today as the architect of BAT's approach. He is no longer in a position to challenge BAT's version of events.) The goal of increasing nicotine relative to tar (i.e. manipulating nicotine) was only to ensure that smokers who switched to lower delivery brands did not end up smoking more cigarettes.

* Filter ventilation is another design element intended to reduce exposure to toxins. Mr. Read explained that it reduces substances in the gaseous part of cigarette smoke, whereas filters only reduce more solid particles.

* Health concerns were also at the origin of the use of additives. This happened after government authorities and independent scientists encouraged BAT to make (supposedly safer) tobacco substitutes more attractive to smokers. Which additives can be used is a government decision.

* Although BAT has yet to introduce a "novel" cigarette product like Eclipse or Premier, they have researched how to do so. BAT has its own approach to novel tobaccos, and Mr. Read identified BATFLAKE and WHITESMOKE as processes that generate a tobacco-like substance with "the sensation of taste and flavour, but with many reduced constituents."

 * BAT's approach to science and cigarette development was always endorsed by/directed by/in response to the views of scientists appointed by government or by government. The company had no undue influence on the scientists who with whom they worked.

* BAT made its research results available to health authorities and health researchers and continues to do so. Mr. Read cited as an example of their openness an invitation issued to Health Canada following a visit by Canadian government officials to the BAT laboratories in England. He said Health Canada was "impressed with the facilities," but never formally replied to his suggestion for "any staff to come and work at Southampton... have access to all of our research" or even "appoint a post doctoral fellow [to work at BAT for Health Canada]."

* Other than a small interruption in the flow of documents to Brown and Williamson, BAT has never failed to provide its affiliated companies with copies of its science. BAT has never destroyed its scientific reports. ("Scientific reports are the lifeblood of R&D.") Lawyers have no role in the drafting of scientific reports or the setting of a science agenda.

* The consumer is king. If safer products have not been put on the market, it is because consumers have not wanted to smoke them.

Cigarettes cause cancer and tobacco is addictive 

One of the big questions in this trial is whether or not the companies concealed the harmfulness of or addictiveness of their products. So the room became very quiet as Ms. Glendinning asked Mr. Read whether BAT acknowledges that cigarettes cause disease. "Yes, it does" he responded simply.

"Has it always been the case?" 
"Not as explicitly as that."

His answer when asked to explain the difference over time became a little hard to follow, although he was clear in his attempts to characterize cancer and heart disease as "diseases of old age."

He allowed that prior to statements by BAT CEO (Martin Broughton) to the U.K. Select Committee in 2000, causation was "a complex subject." From the 1950s, BAT had accepted causation as a "working hypothesis" and "predicated our research on that basis." But Mr. Read seemed to be looking for some historical wiggle room by citing differing scientific criteria for the epidemiological inference of causation.

He said any hesitancy by BAT in accepting causation could not be characterized as an attempt to nurture a "false controversy." Such controversy had been genuine and was related to the complex issues in epidemiology. He suggested that the fault might lie at the other end of a scientific debate. "People in public health have difficulty in expressing complex issues. These [scientific considerations] are not easy to communicate in everyday life."

"Does BAT consider cigarettes to be addictive?"
"Yes."

"Was that always the position?"
"No."

I became lost in the weeds during Mr. Read's explanation of why and when BAT had changed its view on addiction. Justice Riordan must have also had trouble following, for one of his few questions to the witness today was to repeat the question: "Why did BAT change its position?"

This time the reply was most artful. Mr. Read replied that BAT did not think that tobacco and hard drugs met the same criteria for addiction. For his part, he had grown to see that smokers perceived smoking as addictive and that they recognized it was something they did repetitively despite knowing it might be harmful. The art? He both refuted that addiction had been denied, while reinforcing the "everybody knew" defence.

A multi-talented scientist

I know my share of men in their sixties, and there are very few who are at ease with computer graphic software or with page layout. Mr. Read appears to be one of those rare individuals.

Ms. Glendinning invited her witness to share an aide-memoire he had prepared of the events he had described during his testimony. Such graphic representations have been actively discouraged by Justice Riordan in the past, but he (again) allowed Mr. Read a scope that other witnesses were denied.

Mr. Read's chart was admitted as Exhibit 20224, albeit under reserve.

There was no doubting the pronounced first person singular as Mr. Read described how he "prepared something for himself" to help clarify "three timelines." If he had not made his authorship so clear, I would totally have assumed a young lawyer had prepared it for him.

Honest, it's not how it looks!

The last hour of Ms. Glendinning's questions took place after lunch. She asked Mr. Read to comment on testimony of some other witnesses (notably Jeffrey Wigand and André Castonguay). She presented him with eye-catching statements from a joint research-marketing meetings he attended in Montreal in 1984.

Time will tell whether Mr. Read was able to convince Justice Riordan that a more innocent explanation should be believed for BAT statements such as its desire to "identify the minimum dose requirement for nicotine" or "help our consumer rationalize his decision to smoke." 

The cross-examination of Mr. Read will take place tomorrow. On Thursday, Gaeten Duplessis will testify.

Day 163: The University of B.A.T.

Although Graham Albert Read comes after a long-line of other scientists to have testified at the Montreal tobacco trials, he is in a very different league than the others.

His 35-year career at BAT put him at the centre of some of the most controversial (one might even say notorious) aspects of that company's operations -  its research, its business plans, its relationship with governments.

(Type in variants of the name "Graham Albert Read" in the Legacy database of tobacco industry documents housed at the University of California San Francisco, and about 15,000 records will be returned from the files of British American Tobacco.)

Mr. Read started at BAT in 1976 as one of scores of "bench scientists," but he soon rose through the management ranks. By the time he retired in 2010, Mr. Reid held two of the company's top positions: Head of Global Strategic Research and member of the company's Board of Directors.

I am not sure what I would expect a head of global strategic research to look like, but Mr. Read certainly looks the part of a British business leader.

It isn't only his perfectly tailored suit that gives the impression of someone with decades of experience in executive class. He talks with the same posh accent as Britain's current political leaders. When he speaks, it is with the relaxed delivery of someone who is used to talking about important issues without fear of being interrupted. 

Mr. Read knows how to make his testimony sound like a presentation to investors.

No litigation novice.

Despite being three years into retirement, Mr. Read is a busy man. He told the court today that he continues to serve on BAT's Scientific Research Group, but he did not mention that he is also active on other trials. (In addition to the current cases, he was also identified during BAT's recent failed attempt to escape the Quebec government tobacco suit.)

He has already chalked up some experience in North American courts. He was interviewed (deposed) in 1997 during the landmark Minnesota trial, and later testified as an expert witness for BAT at the Ironworkers and  Blue Cross cases. BAT also called him to testify at the Department of Justice trial presided by Justice Gladys Kessler.

A consistent message of responsible corporate action

The version of events presented by Mr. Read today is similar in many ways to the BAT version of events presented elsewhere. These similarities were easy to spot this morning after Deborah Glendinning, who led the examination of Mr. Read, made her first item of business a request for a BAT memorandum to a U.K. parliamentary committee to be tabled as evidence. (Exhibit 20230)

(Usually there have been attempts to fend off any references to parliamentary statements as "parliamentary privilege" but on this occasion no one seemed to want to raise the issue of whether such privilege could be extra-territorial!)

Indeed, Mr. Read kept close to the story line contained in the UK memorandum. He testified that BAT responded in the 1950s and 1960s to health concerns about smoking by providing "significant" donations to medical research, by working closely with government, and by building their own research base.

Mr. Read suggested a noble purpose to the activities of the UK Tobacco Manufacturers Scientific Committee (TMSC), the Tobacco Research Council (TRC), the Tobacco Advisory Council (TAC), and the Scientific Research Group (SRG). He made no reference to the conclusions of others who see these events as a plot to blunt the public health response to smoking, or who feel that true science was subordinated to legal concerns. (See, for example, the Cigarette Papers).

Ms. Glendinning gave Mr. Read many opportunities to share BAT's understanding of history. He explained that the research at Harrogate, and the extensive research on smoke chemistry were a desire by the company to "understand as much as anyone," and to "build as much knowledge as possible." When the industry collaboration on research was eventually wound down, he characterized it as a change in business needs and the natural end of a research program.

An extensive understanding of the relationship between BAT and ITL

Plaintiff lawer, Philippe Trudel, made several objections to questions that seemed to put Mr. Read in the role of expert witness. (A new language policy on the part of the plaintiffs seems to be emerging.  Mr. Trudel made his objections in French, even though ITL's front benches were occupied by the supposedly unilingual Ms. Glendinning and Ms. Roberts).

Despite theses objections, Mr. Read was allowed to be questioned on events that occurred well before his employment at BAT, and on events he was quite distant to at the time they happened.

He said that a 1969 exchange between the newly-appointed Paul Paré and the BAT CEO, Richard Dobson was an "extremely accurate record" of the "quasi independence and autonomy" of Imperial Tobacco in its relationship with its major shareholder. (Exhibits 20210, 20211).

Likewise, he was confident that the relationship between BAT and ITL science departments, as outlined in 1979 by Robert Gibb (Exhibit 20212), not only articulated the expectations of the Canadian branch plant but also suggested the high quality of service that was provided from the "University of BAT."  

Ms. Glendinning asked him to comment on the contretemps between BAT and Imperial Tobacco regarding Project EMN ("eliminate, modify, neutralize") and Project Day. He explained that BAT's scientific concerns in no way impeded the research from continuing in Canada. As Andrew Porter had done last week, he testified that Project Day had eventually been "integrated" into BAT's own workplan.

(Mr. Read gave a more detailed explanation of how Project Day worked. He said the tobacco is made into a slurry, into which enzymes which are similar to those in "washing powder" are introduced. These enzymes remove the proteins. After the enzymes are themselves removed from the tobacco substance, it is made into sheet tobacco suitable for combustible cigarettes).

Decades later - no "safer cigarette" on the market.

Mr. Read spoke glowingly of the commitment of BAT to research a safer product. "It has been a massive research effort. We have done the best that we can do - - and we continue to do so." But he made no claims that any reduced harm products were on the market.

He emphasized that there is still no test which can establish whether one cigarette is safer than another. He identified major flaws with all of the tests that BAT has used.

Mouse-skin painting?  "the wrong substance, the wrong animal, the wrong place."  

Inhalation tests on mammals? They failed to produce disease - except when conducted by scientists using flawed methodologies. (Several reports by BAT scientists documenting the tumourless results of their inhalation tests were put on record as exhibits 20213, 20214, 20215, 20216, 20217, 20218, 20219).

Ames tests in petri dishes? Well, they confused mutagenicity with carcinogenity.

Despite the lack of a meaningful test, Mr. Read had clearly come to a conclusion that BAT was capable of making tobaccos that were less harmful to smokers. These less harmful approaches included the tobacco produced as a result of Project Day, as well as the BALTEC tobacco substitute.

Towards the end of the day, Ms. Glendinning asked Mr. Read to "help the court understand why there isn’t, after all these years, [a safer product on the market]". Mr. Read described the reason as a "Catch 22."  BAT can make sure "the consumer gets less exposure," he said, but the FDA regulatory process impedes it being put on market.

Perhaps tomorrow Ms. Glendinning will allow her witness to explain that he really does understand that FDA authority does not extend to cigarettes sold in Quebec, and to square this explanation with the testimony from Mr. Porter last week that other tobacco modifications (lower TSNA) had been marketed in Canada without any regulatory pre-approval.

Mr. Read's testimony will continue for Tuesday and Wednesday this week. On Thursday, Gaeten Duplessis, a former ITL employee, will testify.