Pennsylvania is home to Hershey's Chocolate, the Liberty Bell — and nicotine-free tobacco?

Vector Group Ltd., a tobacco company, is forming an alliance with Pennsylvanian Amish and Mennonite farmers in an attempt to create a "safer" cigarette. The company has appealed to cash-hungry farmers in Pennsylvania for help in raising a new genetically engineered tobacco crop this year.

"We've been talking to growers in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Oklahoma," said Brandy Bergman, of Citigate Sard Verbinnen, the public relations company for Vector. "We needed our tobacco grown and they agreed."

While Pennsylvania isn't one of the main states that supplies tobacco, tobacco-giant states such as Kentucky and North Carolina have rejected the company's attempts at making the nicotine-free cigarette for fear of consumer backlash.

The Miami-based company said it has engineered a tobacco plant that produces a leaf virtually free of nicotine and nitrosamines, a tobacco-specific carcinogen. The product will be sold in a new cigarette brand called Omni-Free that the company plans to release in 2002.

"We are very encouraged by this development," said Bennett S. LeBow, chairman and chief executive officer of Vector Group. "We believe that a virtually nicotine-free tobacco could provide a non-addictive alternative to smokers and make smoking a matter of choice."

Cigarettes produced with this process have been tested in focus groups in the United States and overseas. Initial tests with smokers indicate that these cigarettes smoke and taste like a conventional cigarette, Vector said in a press release.

Joey Ward, manager of Puff 'n' Snuff, 325 E. Beaver Ave., said there are a few tobacco products already on the market that provide smokers with a healthier alternative to regular cigarettes. Ward said he does not know how effective the new cigarettes would be in changing a smoker's habit.

"Most smokers are too set in their ways to change what they smoke," Ward said.

Some student smokers agree that while the appeal of a healthier cigarette is interesting and much needed, it may not be effective in persuading the masses to switch over.

"While it would be an ideal step, especially for those who smoke just because of an oral fixation, I don't think it would help those addicted to nicotine," Nicole Totino (senior-wildlife sciences) said.

Totino said she would probably try the new product, but is unsure if she would stick to it.

Vector received regulatory approval to grow the modified tobacco from the U.S. Department of Agriculture last week, and already 530 Pennsylvania farmers have signed up for the venture.

Vector is the maker of 6 billion of the 400 billion cigarettes sold annually in the United States. It is the parent company of the Liggett Group, which produces the brands such as Eve and other generic discount cigarettes.

Amish and Mennonites, descendants of 16th-century Swiss and German Anabaptists, have been growing tobacco for generations near Lancaster.