The Premier cigarette was a smokeless cigarette released in the USA in 1988 by American tobacco company R.J. Reynolds. It worked by heating and aerosolizing tobacco flavor and was intended to reduce or eliminate the unhealthy side effects associated with smoking, both to the smoker and to the people around the smoker.
The project took several years to develop at a cost of more than $1 billion.
While RJR itself questioned whether the device functioned adequately as a nicotine delivery device, activists derided it for its potential for use in delivery of other drugs. It never achieved popularity, as smokers complained about a charcoal-like aftertaste, and although it looked like a conventional cigarette, special instructions were required to teach smokers how to light it. RJR estimated that it would take two or three packs for a smoker to acquire a taste for Premier, but in practice many smokers only smoked one cigarette and shared the rest of the pack.
It was withdrawn from the market in 1989, less than a year after its debut.
Premier was the subject of a subplot in the movie Barbarians at the Gate starring James Garner.
Sources
RJR's Secret Project Spa (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/cigarette/history2.html) - initial development concept of a safer cigarette
"Safer" Cigarettes: A History (http://tobaccodocuments.org/landman/138214.html)
A former industry lawyer now says that Liggett was pressured by other cigarette makers to abandon the effort because the "marketing and sale of a safe cigarette could result in infinite liability in civil litigation as it would constitute a direct or implied admission that all other cigarettes were unsafe." Liggett eventually abandoned the project.
Premier, touted as a virtually smokeless cigarette that dramatically reduced the cancer-causing compounds inhaled by smokers, was made of aluminum capsules that contained tobacco pellets.
And the cigarette faced a lengthy regulatory battle after public health officials argued it should be regulated by the FDA as a drug.
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