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nicotine." This quote is a revealing self-portrait. 



Or listen to the words in one tobacco company patent: 



Medical research has established that nicotine is the active 

 ingredient in tobacco. Small doses of nicotine provide the 

 user with certain pleasurable effects resulting in the 

 desire for additional doses". 



-patent no. 4,676,259 Cl:21-24 



The Design of Cigarettes 



How does this industry design cigarettes? 



The history of the tobacco industry is a story of how a 

 product that may at one time have been a simple agricultural 

 commodity appears to have become a nicotine delivery system. 

 Prior to the 1940' s, the waste products from cigarettes -- the 

 stems, the scraps, and the dust -- were discarded. The tobacco 

 industry had identified no use for these materials in the 

 cigarette manufacturing process. 



Then, in the 1940s and '50s, the industry created 

 reconstituted tobacco from the previously unusable tobacco stems, 

 scraps, and dust. This gave cigarette makers the ability to 

 reduce the cost of producing cigarettes by using fewer tobacco 

 leaves and making up the difference by using reconstituted 

 tobacco. While the motive appeared to be purely economic, the 

 reconstitution process was nevertheless a critical development 

 that started the industry down the path toward controlling and 

 manipulating nicotine levels. The ability to control and 

 manipulate nicotine levels becomes important in light of another 

 key realization. Industry patents show that the industry 

 recognized that nicotine is the active ingredient in tobacco 



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