Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph No. 7 
There has been a slight increase in unprotonated nicotine, but it is a 
minor difference, because it is still a blended cigarette. If you smoke a 
French cigarette, which are the black or burley type cigarettes, they have 
a pH of 7.5, or 40 percent of the nicotine is unprotonated; whereas, in our 
blended U.S. cigarettes, less than 5 percent is unprotonated. As an English 
study by Turner and others has shown, when you have unprotonated 
nicotine, most of it has a quicker result to the mucous membrane, especially 
of the oral cavity. In other words, when you have unprotonated nicotine, 
not in salt form but in free base, most of it is in the water phase, and 
therefore it is absorbed more quickly by the surface of the bronchial 
epithelium or the oral cavity. 
Therefore, you would rarely see a Frenchman taking as deep inhalations 
as a smoker of a blended cigarette with an active filter tip. You watch a 
Paris cab driver and you will see that they never inhale; he just dangles the 
cigarette on the side of his mouth, because he would get a tremendous 
nicotine kick if he inhaled. 
DR. HARRIS: Does the protonation state of nicotine, whether it is protonated 
or free base, affect the measurement method of nicotine as currently used by 
the FTC? 
DR. HOFFMANN: No, the pH is not measured. 1 do not see the need because 
so far, in our U.S. blended cigarettes, there are no major differences. That 
may change, but at present, it is not. 
DR. HUGHES: 1 noticed over time that the tar and nicotine yields have 
changed somewhat. What is your opinion about how feasible it is, using 
existing techniques, to change that ratio? 
DR. HOFFMANN: The first study was performed in the United Kingdom 
by Russell. It demonstrated that the ratio of tar to nicotine, which was 
originally 100 to 6, has changed to 100 to 10. We see this in low yielding 
cigarettes. In other words, the nicotine is not reduced to the same extent 
that the tar is reduced. 
DR. HUGHES: And how feasible would it be for the manufacturers to 
deliberately change that ratio at this point? 
DR. HOFFMANN: I'hey can do it easily by changing the tobacco variety, 
which is high in nicotine. We have heard about genetic engineering for 
a tobacco variety that is very high in nicotine. So that is possible. 1 mean, 
the manufacturer has everything in his hand to have high nicotine and 
low tar or vice versa. 
In fact, for a brief time, there was a cigarette on the market that was free 
of nicotine. I he nicotine was extracted from the tobacco with supercritical 
fluid transaction, and the tobacco was then used for cigarettes. So, the 
tobacco industry has a whole spectrum from high- to low-nicotine yield. 
Fhat depends on what the consumer requests. 
