FOR years, Altria, home to Philip Morris and its popular Marlboro cigarette brand, was a corporate pariah blamed for the deaths of millions of people and sued for hundreds of billions of dollars by attorneys general in every state. After eventually acknowledging, like others in its industry, that cigarette smoking was, indeed, addictive and caused disease, Altria went a step further. It broke from the Big Tobacco pack and began supporting legislation that would ultimately put the company under the regulatory thumb of the Food and Drug Administration.

Altria’s motives for submitting to strict oversight have long been a mystery. Did the company and its executives, who were internally pursuing a strategy of “societal alignment,” suddenly embrace a true partnership on public health? Or was this a case, as its longtime foes and competitors have argued, of Altria seeking to generate good P.R. or lock in its market dominance by cozying up to a regulator that could restrict rivals from marketing new products?

Another possible answer was highlighted this month, as the federal government began fine-tuning aspects of a law that President Obama signed last summer that gives the government sweeping new powers to regulate the production and marketing of tobacco products.

A series of letters that Altria submitted to the F.D.A. as part of that process argues that the government should, effectively, sign off on the notion that smokeless tobacco products are less harmful than cigarettes — and that Altria and other companies should be allowed to market them as such to consumers.