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Dear Chagrined,
I saw the same program and took some notes so I could
share some of the info to readers like you. It's been
over 23 years since I smoked my last cigarette. After
the federal government began testing cigarettes for tar
and nicotine in 1967, I also had started smoking so-called
"light" cigarettes until I finally came to my
senses and quit entirely. 60 Minutes II reported
that "The idea of a less harmful cigarette is still
so powerful that now more than 80 percent of all cigarettes
sold in America are low-tar brands.....What smokers don't
know is that the government's low-tar number on the pack
has almost nothing to do with how much tar they're inhaling.
It only tells you how much tar is being delivered to a
smoking machine, not to human smokers." The result?
Since testing began, more than 12 million Americans have
died from smoking- related diseases!
I wasn't a bit surprised to learn that
the tobacco companies knew that the tar-number on each
pack was useless info... but, what I didn't know is that
the federal government also knew!! The machine
used for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission test measures
addictive nicotine and cancer-causing tar. The FTC publishes
results brand by brand and, for 35 years, tobacco companies
have used those figures as a powerful sales tool. Dr.
David Burns, writer of the yearly surgeon general's report
on smoking since 1975, noted that the FTC test doesn't
measure the tar that people actually get, explaining,
"If you change the way you smoke that cigarette,
if you inhale more deeply, if you draw harder on the cigarette,
if you take more puffs, then you change the amount that
you get from it." The machine doesn't smoke like
a human subject (it takes a 2-second puff, just once a
minute). Why?... Because the machine doesn't crave
addictive nicotine.... but people do!
Philip Morris has known that for nearly
30 years. An internal 1974 company document written by
the then head of research says, "People smoke in
such a way that they get much more than predicted by machine."
Because "it gives low numbers," the report recommended
that the FTC test should be retained and used in its advertising
of "light" cigarettes. Another researcher, hired
by Philip Morris in 1976 to analyze cigarette safety,
reported in another internal document that low-tar cigarette
smokers compensate by simply smoking more "lights"
and by using additional maneuvers to get more (nicotine)
out of each.
So, how does the cigarette deliver less
tar to the machine and more to the smoker? 60 Minutes
II noted what most smokers overlook: there are tiny
holes in the filter that allow fresh air to dilute the
smoke. A smoker, unlike a machine, can cover the holes
with his or her fingers; put lips over them; or suck harder
and get more tar than if they weren't covered. Thus, a
nicotine addict can instinctively defeat the stated purpose
of the holes. The FTC dramatically underestimated the
ability of the tobacco companies to engineer these cigarettes
so that, while they would likely deliver a full dose of
tar (and the highly addictive nicotine) to people, they
would provide a trivial dose to the machine. Bottom line:
the tobacco industry demonstrated in their own internal
studies that the light cigarettes and the regular cigarettes,
when smoked by people, delivered exactly the same amount
of tar and nicotine.
My advice to you, Chagrined, is
to call the New Jersey Quitline (1-866 NJ-STOPS) which
offers free smoking cessation counseling and advice. "Lights"
are killing you.
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