Tobacco companies increasing nicotine content of cigarettes

Cigarette :: Tobacco companies increasing nicotine content of cigarettes

Harvard School of Public Health researchers found cigarettes manufacturers steadily increased the levels of nicotine addictive agent in cigarettes.

A reanalysis of nicotine yield from major brand name cigarettes sold in MA from 1997 to 2005 has confirmed that manufacturers steadily increased the levels of this addictive agent. Increases in smoke nicotine yield per cigarette averaged 1.6 percent each year or about 11 percent over a seven-year period (1998-2005).

Findings from the report "Trends in Smoke Nicotine Yield and Relationship to Design Characteristics Among Popular U.S. Cigarette Brands" presented at Harvard School of Public Health, Bldg 3/Rm 203, on Thurs., Jan_18, 2007.

The analysis was performed by a research team from the Tobacco Control Research Program at HSPH led by program director Gregory Connolly, professor of the practice of public health, and Howard Koh, associate dean for public health practice at HSPH and a former commissioner of public health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1997-2003). The other co-investigators were HSPH researchers Hillel R. Alpert and Geoffrey Ferris Wayne.

"Cigarettes are finely-tuned drug delivery devices, designed to perpetuate a tobacco pandemic," said former Commissioner Koh. "Yet precise information about these products remains shrouded in secrecy, hidden from the public. Policy actions today requiring the tobacco industry to disclose critical information about nicotine and product design could protect the next generation from the tragedy of addiction."