242 



'MAJOR FLAW CITED 

 IN CICAREnE DATA 



Testing for Tar and Nicotine 

 Underreports Amounts 



By PHILIP J. HILTS 



Special w The >«e» Yort Time* 



WASHINGTON. May 1 - Smokers 

 of cigarettes labeled low in lar and 

 nico(ine may be gettmg more at those 

 substances than they think. Federal 

 Trade Comrais5ion officials and ex- 

 perts in smokjng now agree. And they 

 * attribute the problem to testing that 

 has not kept up with the changes in 

 cigarette design over the last il 

 years. 



Since 1971, when the results of the 

 tests were first printed In cigarette 

 advertising and on packaging, ciga- 

 rettes labeled low in tar and nicotine 

 have taken over the market, now ac- 

 counting for 60 percent of the clga- 

 Irettes soW in this country. 

 i National polls conducted by the 

 ; Gallup organi2ation have fou/Kl that 

 t smokers believe that the cigarette* 

 -labeted "light* are less hazardous 

 ji«nd will give them less tar and nico- 

 Ttine. But evidence has accumulated 

 -that the measurements, which are 

 carried out by tobacco company lab- 

 oratories under the supervision of the 

 F.T.C.. bear little or no relation to how 

 much nicotine and lar smokers actu=^ 

 ally get from smoking, because know- 

 ingly or unknowingly smokers often 

 draw deeper or puff harder. 



"The commission has been aware 

 for a while that the test has problems 

 regarding the actual intake that con- 

 sumers will get. " Judith D. Wilken- 

 feld, assistant director in the F.T.C.'s 

 Division of Advertising Practices, 

 said in a telephone interview. 



"We know that consumers do not 

 smoke in exactly the same manner as 



the machine" used in testing, she 

 said. "So the tests will not predict the 

 actual human consumption." 



Ms. Wilkenfeld said the commis- 

 sion was kjoking at alternatives to the 

 tar and nicotine tests, and added that 

 the pressure to make a decision had 

 recently increased 



The commission's cigarette tests 

 are done by machines that hold the 

 cigarette and draw air through it in 

 two-second puffs, repeating the puffs 

 once every minute until the cigarette 

 bums to the filter 



But cigarettes now include several 

 features that make the machine tests 

 meaningless, said Dr. Jack E. Hen- 

 ningfield. chief of clinical pharmacol- 

 ogy research at the National Insti- 

 tutes on Drug Abuse. 



For example, to dilute the snwke. a 

 laajority of cigarettes now have near- 

 ly invisible holes in their filter paper, 

 or in the cigarette paper near the 

 . niter. 



People vs. Machines 



When the smoking machine draws 

 on a cigarette, a large amount of air 

 is drawn in, and this dilutes the 

 smoke getting to the measuring de- 

 vice, making today's cigarettes ap- 

 pear to contain less tar and nicotine. 



But smokers do not handle the ciga- 

 rettes the same way machines do. 

 They find the diluted smoke mikJer^ 

 and to make up for the "lighter' 

 lASte, or less satisfying amount of 

 nicotine, they puff more or draw 

 deeper, pulling in nwre total smoke, 

 so that the result for the smoker is the 

 san>e amount, or more, of nicotine 

 and ur. ^ , 



In addition, the tiny filtration holes 

 are often blocked by smokers with 

 their lips or hands, thus cutting off the 

 air that would have diluted the 

 smoke. ^ . . 



Experts outside the FTC said that 

 the options for the commission in- 

 clude abandoning the test because it 

 is misleading, trying to establish a 



