Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph No. 7 
DR. COHEN: But it begs the question: Is there a way to provide two types 
of information, either in advertising or on the cigarette packages or both? 
The first type is the level of risk for that particular kind of cigarette or the 
level of harmfulness, and the second one is, can we give them a better sense 
of the relative magnitudes? I do not know the answer to either question, 
but I think that if we are going to wonder what we can do to help consumers, 
I think we should think long and hard about the need for those two different 
pieces of information. 
DR. FREEMAN: At this point we are going to shift gears a little bit and get 
into the essence of the deliberations, and we thank the members of the 
tobacco industry for receiving those questions. We will go to the next phase 
of this discussion, which is the main phase and that is, as you remember 
from yesterday, we posed three questions that we were supposed to answer 
during these deliberations, and we are going to look at each of those three 
questions and get your comments on each one. 
Question 1. Does the evidence presented clearly demonstrate that changes 
are needed in the current FTC protocol for measuring nicotine, 
tar, and carbon monoxide, and if so, what changes are required? 
DR. GIOVINO: A lot has been made in this conference of the trends over 
time in the FTC yield in terms of tar and nicotine with a very large decline 
between the 1950's and 1980, roughly, and then a leveling off, and from the 
data that have been presented at this conference, I have to wonder, especially 
given Dr. Guerin's comments, what would that curve look like if consumer 
changes in puff frequency, puff volume, hole blocking, and vent blocking 
were incorporated? Dr. Guerin and Dr. Zacny have shown that the yields can 
be changed, given various factors, and I see that trend as a measure of yes, 
a standardized measure, but one that may not be as relevant now as it was 
40 years ago. 
So, I have to ask the panel to consider in its deliberations the issue of the 
usefulness of those trend data, given as was demonstrated yesterday the wide 
range of products now available and the different degrees of compensation 
that can happen with those products. 
DR. TOWNSEND: May I respond to that? I believe that the trends that 
you saw yesterday in the chart are useful today as they always have been. 
One thing that I think there is consensus on within this panel is that if 
you change puffing conditions, what you do is shift the tar and nicotine 
yields up or down depending on to what level you change those puffing 
conditions. Even if you block the vents, you shift the tar and nicotine yields 
up, but in general the relative ranking does not change. If the relative 
ranking does not change, you are only changing the absolute values. Then 
that is going to have no substantive effect on the trend charts that showed 
nicotine and tar yield decreases over the years. 
DR. GIOVINO: 1 have to wonder, given the situation 40 years ago when tar 
and nicotine levels were so high, if those behaviors would have been so 
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