ARE
YOU THINKING ABOUT QUITTING SMOKING?
IS YOUR
FIRST STEP TO SWITCH TO A ‘LIGHTER’ OR ‘MILDER’ BRAND?
WELL IF YOU ARE, BUYER BEWARE:
How
many people do you know that hold the assumption above: that
cigarettes branded ‘light’ or ‘mild’ are in someway healthier? It
makes sense to start the road to being smoke free by weeding
yourself off and changing to lighter or milder brands, right? Or
if you’re determined to smoke, it might make sense to you to
smoke a ‘lighter’ and thus ‘healthier’ brand. Do
the quotation marks give it away? Yes, all these
descriptors are false.
It turns
out that ‘lighter’ and ‘milder’ brands are not better for you
than stronger brands at all. This is because the tar
and nicotine values that are used to label them don’t apply to
the normal smoker. ‘Lighter’ and ‘milder’ cigarettes
are actually labelled that way because they deliver less poisons
to the machine that tobacco companies use to measure toxins. This
is partially due to the fact that the machines don’t interfere
with special ventilation holes on the filters. Real
smokers usually hold onto the filters and block these hole thus
delivering the full blast of the smoke to their lungs. Research
has also shown that smokers usually take deeper and longer puffs
to satisfy their original needed level of nicotine. This
means that they are just holding in for longer almost the original
level of toxins. More frighteningly, smoke from ‘light’ cigarettes
have been alleged to be more damaging to genetic chromosomes
than the regular kind. These labels have also come
under the fire of accusations that ‘lighter’ and ‘milder’ campaigns
have targeted youth and more specifically women.
Ridiculously
it is only now that this knowledge is being made available to
the general public. Just this year, a lawsuit was
filed against the Imperial Tobacco Company, a branch of the British
American Tobacco Company, alleging that ITC wilfully misled consumers
about the health dangers of ‘light’ and ‘mild’ cigarettes. This
comes on the tail of a similar case in the US where the Philip
Morris tobacco company lost a 15 billion dollar CDN. More
advances are being made across the ocean where the Europe Union
has taken the incentive and banned all ‘light’ and ‘mild’ descriptors
as of September 2003.
Other
than just being misleading, the descriptors are confusing and
if you find them confusing you are not alone. Research
funded by Health Canada in 1998-1999 found that 59%
of Canadian smokers found ‘light’ and ‘mild’ descriptors confusing. And
the tobacco companies aren’t making it easier. Some,
like the Benson and Hedges (of the Symphony of Fire fame at Niagara
Falls) brand mixes the ‘light’ and ‘mild’ descriptors and puts
out cigarettes labelled regular, light, menthol, menthol light,
special mild, special kings, ultra mild etc! Other
companies like Vantage like to use numbers as descriptors which
is more misleading because it is fundamental assumption that
1 is lower than 9 (regular).
In the
end tobacco companies are under serious attack from anti-smoking
activists, physician and medical groups, and political agenda.
In Canada, on August of 2001 the current Minister
of Health, Allen Rock, issued a demand for a voluntary ban, by
the tobacco companies, on the false descriptors under the threat
of heavy consequences. Yet, two years later, we can all still
see that misnomers still line the shelves of convenience stores
and people still think that ‘lighter’ and ‘milder’ cigarettes
are healthier.