298 



- 54 



New York State Journal of Medicine ; 



"Fifty percent of those who smoke low-tar cigarettes admit to 

 blocking the holes; thus, there could be little. If any, change In 

 the risk of smoking-related diseases... But although consumers can 

 be warned of the danger of hole blocking, the vents on many brands 

 are all but invisible to the human eye." ^'' 



"... smoking machines report lower tar and nicotine content than 

 that actually consumed by the smoker." (pg 315, Miller) Also, "the 

 Federal Trade Commission noted in an Injunction against Brown and 

 Williamson Tobacco Company that the ventilation channels near the 

 top of the cigarette, which were supposed to reduce tar and carbon 

 monoxide Intake, were blocked by the smoker's lips but not by the 

 smoking machine." '2° 



New England Journal of Medicine ; 



The following is an abstract of a study which concluded that the FTC 

 values do not reflect what is actually taken into the body of the 

 cigarette smoker; 



"Advertisements suggest that smokers of cigarettes low in nicotine 

 are exposed to less nicotine and tar. Nicotine yields are measured 

 with smoking machines, but machines do not smoke cigarettes as 

 people do. We therefore measured the actual nicotine content of 

 commercial cigarettes with different nicotine and tar yields as 

 determined with smoking machines, and also measured actual nicotine 

 intake as indicated by blood concentrations of its metabolite, 

 cotlnlne, in 272 subjects smoking various brands of cigarettes. We 

 found th«t low-yield cigarette tobacco did not contain less 

 nicotint; in fact, the nicotine concentration in tobacco Inversely 

 correlated (r - - 0.53, P<0.05) with the concentration measured by 

 sacking aachlnes. Blood cotinine concentrations correlated with the 

 number of cigarettes smoked per day but not with the nicotine yield 

 measured by smoking machines. Only 3.8 to 5.0 percent of total 

 variance in blood cotinine was contributed by nicotine yield. We 

 conclude that smokers of low-nicotine cigarettes do not consume less 

 nicotine." ^^' 



4. Harmful Components of Tobacco Smoke Other Than Tar and Nicotine 



