Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph No. 7 
DR. SHIFFMAN: I think, again, specifically we want to be sure that the 
smoker understands that smoking a cigarette that is labeled as light or 
ultralight does not necessarily protect them from the health risks of smoking 
and that, in that sense, cutting down in this way may not keep people from 
being cut down eventually by their smoking habit. We do think that the 
public perceives those labels as implicit health claims. 
DR. FREEMAN: It is even conceivable that a low-tar cigarette smoked in a 
certain way may have the same health risk as a regular cigarette, and we have 
pointed out in what I have already said that there is no scientific evidence 
that any level of tar in cigarettes protects one against death due to coronary 
heart disease. 
PARTICIPANT: The other substances that you referred to, are you going to 
talk about numbers? 
DR. RICKERT: I think that what the committee felt in that area was that at 
the present time, since there is evidence that consumers tend to misinterpret 
the existing numbers, that to add additional numbers may add to that 
confusion. At the same time there was the concern that there are additional 
agents, other than tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide, that have definite 
implications for health. It was anticipated that these compounds would be 
classified in various ways, for example, "carcinogens," and then there may 
be a list of several carcinogens. There would be a list based on toxicological 
effects but not including any numerical measurement. 
PARTICIPANT: Can the machinery that is currently used to test cigarettes be 
used? 
DR. FREEMAN: We were told by an expert today that there may be some 
fine tuning that will be necessary to use the current equipment to do this 
kind of testing. 
PARTICIPAN'F: Who would determine what that range was and how many 
times the machine smoked or how long the puffs? 
DR. FREEMAN: This committee did not go into that kind of detail. We are 
talking about the principle, and the principle is that we know that human 
smokers smoke in different patterns. Some smokers puff many times in a 
minute, and some smokers may puff once a minute. Some smokers puff 
deeply, and there are other factors that 1 could mention. While we are not 
trying to micromanage how this should be done, the principle is that we 
would like the machine measurement to more closely mimic the variation 
that humans evidence in their patterns of smoking to give a more honest 
range of what a given milligram of tar really represents in range. We do not 
believe it is accurate at all; in fact, it is misleading to give one number when 
the pattern of smoking can change that number radically with respect to 
dose. 
DR. SHIFFMAN: What the [)anel intended was that the range represent the 
range of human smoking of |)articular brands so that the machine would 
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