Are There Any Safe Cigarettes Part 3

In 1975, Brown and Williamson introduced a new cigarette called Fact, with a new filter designed to selectively remove toxic compounds such a cyanide. However the product did not please consumers, and was removed from the market two years later.

An internet search for "cigarette filter patent" produces 425,000 results as manufacturers strive to outdo each over in the invention of filter materials and baffles to construct a cigarette which they claim is less toxic but still appealing to smokers.

It is difficult to make a filter which removes tar but not nicotine, and tobacco companies have now focused their attention on growing tobacco plants with a higher nicotine content, in order to satisfy smokers' nicotine addiction with proportionately less exposure to tar. Rumors that cigarette companies "spike"their products with extra nicotine have met with public uproar, since cigarettes are sold as a natural agricultural product.

Scientists have also experiments with tobacco substitutes , with ingredients such as wood pulp, which would produce smoke flavor with less tar. Legal hurdles have stopped such projects, as they are no longer "natural" but rather an artificially-manufactured substance about which health claims are being made.

Such products are treated as drugs, and subject to lengthy regulatory battles before they are allowed to be sold. For the tobacco companies, manipulating naturally-grown tobacco leaf is cheaper and more profitable in a competitive marketplace.

Since a cigarette is basically a delivery system for an addictive drug, nicotine, it is theoretically possible to produce a product which has only nicotine, without the diversion of tar. In fact, such a product exists: the nicotine patch.

At its most basic level, it has exactly the same function as a cigarette. However, it has less social cachet than the packaging, rituals and paraphernalia associated with smoking: it is for people who want to wean themselves off their addiction and quit smoking for good.

Tags: Reasons Why to Quit Smoking