Are You a Smoker?

Tweet

"Cigarettes are finely tuned drug delivery devices, designed to perpetuate a tobacco pandemic," said Howard Koh, an associate dean for public health practice who worked on the analysis. "Yet precise information about these products remains shrouded in secrecy, hidden from the public."Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health say they have confirmed a study by the state that found nicotine levels in cigarettes increased from 1997 until 2005. The analysis, based on data submitted to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health by cigarette manufacturers, found that increases in smoke nicotine yield per cigarette averaged 1.6 percent each year, for a total of about 11 percent over a seven-year period. The health department study released last October examined nicotine levels in more than 100 brands over a six-year period. The study showed a steady climb in the amount of nicotine delivered to the lungs of smokers. Gregory Connolly, head of the Tobacco Control Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the increase found in Harvard's study is due primarily to an increase in nicotine in the raw tobacco used in the cigarettes. "There's something going on either with the type of tobacco they're using or the addition of more nicotine to the reconstituted tobacco. We just don't know," Connolly said. He also said the findings call into question whether the tobacco industry is living up to its 1998 agreement with states that it would launch a campaign to reduce smoking by young people. "If that same industry turns around and advances the availability of nicotine in the product, you may not get fewer kids smoking," he said.