Tobacco industry

are dangerous and that

nicotine is addictive. A Liggett official made the statement last week

in settling lawsuits by

22 states. The letters a new nationwide poll commissioned by an

anti-smoking group

indicated that 73 percent of Americans '' should hold hearings on the

tobacco industry.''

Democrats held dramatic hearings in 1994 to investigate tobacco industry

practices. After

Republicans won control of the House in the November 1994 elections, the

new majority

party ended the tobacco hearings.America's largest tobacco company tests

new products

all the time,usually out of the limelight. But the 1990 project

conducted at the

now-defunct Bermuda Hundred production complex in Chesterfield County is

under

federal investigation, sources said, because it involved the transfer of

nicotine from one

batch of tobacco to another an issue provoking heated debate in

Congress.

Philip Morris filed a $10 billion lawsuit in Richmond against ABC. A

year

later, an out-of-court settlement was reached when the network made a

carefully worded

apology for the spiking charges. Still, ABC stuck by what it insisted

was the main thrust of

the program -- that the nation's major tobacco companies ''control the

levels of nicotine in

cigarettes in order to keep people smoking.''(Times)