BOSTON, March 18 (UPI) — Tobacco companies evaded the federal ban on misleading wording and still convey the false message “light” cigarettes are safer, U.S. researchers say.
Study co-author Gregory Connolly, director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard School of Public Health, said one year after the federal government passed a law banning word descriptors such as light, “mild,” and “low” on cigarette packages, smokers can still easily identify their brands because of color-coding that tobacco companies added to light packs after the ban.
“The tobacco industry was found guilty by a federal court in 2006 for deceptively promoting ‘light’ cigarettes as safer after countless smokers who switched to lights died prematurely, thinking they had reduced their health risks,” Connolly said in a statement.
After the U.S. Surgeon General’s 1964 report found cigarette smoking causes disease, tobacco companies began marketing light cigarettes with ventilation holes that allowed air to mix with smoke, which the companies said would limit the amount of smoke a person would inhale, Connolly said.
However, a 2001 National Cancer Institute report found smokers compensated for the lower smoke yield in light cigarettes and ingested as much tar and nicotine as regular cigarettes — by smoking more intensely, more often, or by blocking the ventilation holes with their fingers or lips.
The study was published online in Tobacco Control.
Copyright 2013 United Press International, Inc. (UPI).
It’s all about the taxes the state makes on them. Remember when the states took over the liquior stores. They wanted the money from selling booze. And then picking you up for drunk driving.
Exactly, and this is why were are ALL drug dealers. We take money from tobacco companies and that makes us all drug dealers and our drugs kill make no mistake about it, but we turn a blind eye for the money. It’s only a war on some drugs. Those drugs.
Why is THIS drug OK in many of your minds, but not others?
If you desire prohibition for other drugs, why not this one?
I mean seriously, society has been so brain washed on the subject of drugs that I’d venture to say we are drug retarded.
Because after I smoked a pack of cigarettes, I could still do my job unimpaired?
I see, so in your mind a drugs legal-ness so to speak, should be based on how well one can work on it and not how dangerous it is, right? It’s not so much about health as it is about the ability to do work?
Smokers = Losers. Simple enough.
Right…but you don’t advocate throwing them in prison, right?
Adding air holes to cigarettes is like adding an air pump to vehicles, the poison is still there.
If tobacco is so bad for you why isn’t it illegal?
I see people ranting all over the place of pot makes a dog sick, but when cigs kill they say nothing.
Why is this? It seems pretty sick.
You’ll have to ask somebody else that question, if I had my way, all tobacco would be illegal. Some people do say things, I for one say, dumbass….