1. What is a so called light cigarette?

    Tobacco manufacturers have been redesigning cigarettes since the 1950s. Certain redesigned cigarettes with the following features were marketed as light cigarettes

    • Cellulose acetate filters (to trap tar).
    • Highly porous cigarette paper (to allow toxic chemicals to escape).
    • Ventilation holes in the filter tip (to dilute smoke with air).
    • Different blends of tobacco.

    When analyzed by a smoking machine, the smoke from a so called light cigarette has a lower yield of tar than the smoke from a regular cigarette. However, a machine cannot predict how much tar a smoker inhales. Also, studies have shown that changes in cigarette design have not lowered the risk of disease caused by cigarettes (1).

    On June 22, 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which granted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products. One provision of the new law bans tobacco manufacturers from using the terms light, low, and mild in product labeling and advertisements. This provision went into effect on June 22, 2010. However, some tobacco manufacturers are using color coded packaging (such as gold or silver packaging) on previously marketed products and selling them to consumers who may continue to believe that these cigarettes are not as harmful as other cigarettes (2 4).

  2. Are light cigarettes less hazardous than regular cigarettes?

    No. Many smokers chose so called low tar, mild, light, or ultralight cigarettes because they thought these cigarettes would expose them to less tar and would be less harmful to their health than regular or full flavor cigarettes. However, light cigarettes are no safer than regular cigarettes. Tar exposure from a light cigarette can be just as high as that from a regular cigarette if the smoker takes long, deep, or frequent puffs. The bottom line is that light cigarettes do not reduce the health risks of smoking.

    Moreover, there is no such thing as a safe cigarette. The only guaranteed way to reduce the risk to your health, as well as the risk to others, is to stop smoking completely.

    Because all tobacco products are harmful and cause cancer, the use of these products is strongly discouraged. There is no safe level of tobacco use. People who use any type of tobacco product should quit. For help with quitting, refer to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) fact sheet Where To Get Help When You Decide To Quit Smoking, which is available at on the Internet.

  3. Do light cigarettes cause cancer?

    Yes. People who smoke any kind of cigarette are at much greater risk of lung cancer than people who do not smoke (5). Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body and diminishes a person s overall health.

    People who switched to light cigarettes from regular cigarettes are likely to have inhaled the same amount of toxic chemicals, and they remain at high risk of developing smoking related cancers and other disease (1). Smoking causes cancers of the lung, esophagus, larynx (voice box), mouth, throat, kidney, bladder, pancreas, stomach, and cervix, as well as acute myeloid leukemia (6).

    Regardless of their age, smokers can substantially reduce their risk of disease, including cancer, by quitting.

  4. What were the tar yield ratings used by the tobacco industry for light cigarettes?

    Although no Federal agency formally defined the range of tar yield for light or ultralight cigarettes, the tobacco industry used the ranges shown in the table below (5, 7).

    Industry Terms on PackagesMachine measured Tar Yield (in milligrams)Ultralight or Ultralow tarUsually 7 or lessLight or Low tarUsually 8 14Full flavor or RegularUsually 15 or more

    These ratings were not an accurate indicator of how much tar a smoker might have been exposed to, because people do not smoke cigarettes the same way the machines do and no two people smoke the same way.

    Ultralight and light cigarettes are no safer than full flavor cigarettes. There is no such thing as a safe cigarette (1).

  5. Are machine measured tar yields misleading?

    Yes. The ratings cannot be used to predict how much tar a smoker will actually get because the way the machine smokes a cigarette is not the way a person smokes a cigarette. A rating of 7 milligrams does not mean that you will get only 7 milligrams of tar. You can get just as much tar from a light cigarette as from a full flavor cigarette. It all depends on how you smoke. Taking deeper, longer, and more frequent puffs will lead to greater tar exposure. Also, a smoker s lips or fingers may block the air ventilation holes in the filter, leading to greater tar exposure (7).

  6. Why would someone smoking a light cigarette take bigger puffs than with a regular cigarette?

    Cigarette features that reduce the yield of machine measured tar also reduce the yield of nicotine. Because smokers crave nicotine, they may inhale more deeply take larger, more rapid, or more frequent puffs or smoke extra cigarettes each day to get enough nicotine to satisfy their craving. As a result, smokers end up inhaling more tar, nicotine, and other harmful chemicals than the machine based numbers suggest (1).

    Tobacco industry documents show that companies were aware that smokers of light cigarettes compensated by taking bigger puffs. Industry documents also show that the companies were aware of the difference between machine measured yields of tar and nicotine and what the smoker actually inhaled (8).

  7. How can I get help to quit smoking?

    There are many groups that can help smokers quit

    • Go online to ( ), a Web site created by NCI s Tobacco Control Research Branch, and use the Step by Step Quit Guide.
    • Call NCI s Smoking Quitline at 1 877 44U QUIT (1 877 448 7848) for individualized counseling, printed information, and referrals to other sources.
    • Refer to the NCI fact sheet Where To Get Help When You Decide To Quit Smoking, which is available at on the Internet.

No longer blowing smoke? e-cigarettes could surpass traditional brands, experts say

Midday report: marlboro maker moves into e-cigarettes – dailyfinance

WINSTON SALEM When change has come for tobacco during its nearly two centuries as a star of North Carolina&#x92 s economy, it usually has arrived at a leisurely pace.

Not this time. The crop and products made from it face something that has gutted or transformed many other industries in recent years a disruptive technology.

Electronic cigarettes are winning over smokers so quickly that some analysts predict the battery powered newcomer could come out on top of traditional cigarettes within a decade. That&#x92 s unsettling for the farmers and manufacturers who still make North Carolina the national leader in tobacco production and rivaled only by Virginia in cigarette manufacturing.

E cigarettes heat a liquid, usually containing the highly addictive stimulant nicotine, into a vapor that users inhale. Nicotine for the liquid is extracted from tobacco, but experts think it may take less tobacco to make the &#x93 juice&#x94 than required for an equivalent amount of traditional cigarettes.

That economic threat can also be an opportunity, partly because of the state&#x92 s decades of tobacco expertise and partly because of an odd bit of luck involving a plant called clary sage.

Some think that e cigarettes may even offer a way to slow the gradual slide in tobacco sales for domestic use, a slide that began decades before the advent of e cigarettes.

&#x93 It has been interesting to watch e cigarettes move from almost a novelty to a trend,&#x94 said state Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler. &#x93 The bad news is, if it results in the decline of demand for traditional tobacco, then we are going to have a new set of problems, but the good news is, yes, we are poised to take advantage of it.&#x94

This may be the key year in North Carolina&#x92 s effort to muscle into that leadership role. One reason is that Big Tobacco is becoming Big Vapor, too Major tobacco companies are moving to get ahead of the potential shift in the market by selling e cigarettes themselves, either by buying companies already in the business or starting their own. And two of the nation&#x92 s three largest tobacco companies are here.

With their deep pockets, intimate knowledge of the market, powerful research and development capacity and massive sales and distribution networks, they are in a position to quickly seize the majority of the market for e cigarettes, said Bonnie Herzog, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities who follows the e cigarette and tobacco industries.

She and other experts believe that the big companies will market devices that simply work better, which will win over more smokers.

Greensboro based Lorillard, the nation&#x92 s third largest tobacco company, has been perhaps the most aggressive, snapping up an established e cigarette company called Blu in 2012 for $135 million. Lorillard now has nearly half the national market share for e cigarettes.

And the nation&#x92 s second largest tobacco company, Reynolds American Inc., based in Winston Salem, has launched its own e cigarette subsidiary, R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co. It has developed an e cigarette that, unlike nearly all its rivals, is made in the United States.

Reynolds is planning to launch its Vuse brand nationwide this summer. Its test marketing results suggest the impact will be huge. In July, it started sales in Colorado and quickly gained more than half the market in that state. And RJR Vapor Co. President Stephanie Cordisco said in an interview that a second phase of test marketing that began in Utah in late January is showing similar results.

The largest tobacco company, Richmond, Va. based Altria Group, has test marketed its own e cigarette, MarkTen, in two states and plans to go national in the second quarter of the year. Altria is the parent company of Philip Morris.

Transforming a market

The stakes are huge. Last year, Herzog forecast that by 2023, Reynolds could earn $5.2 billion in revenue from e cigarettes and $3.1 billion from traditional ones. And it, Lorillard and Altria would all see about half their revenue from traditional cigarettes vanish by 2023.

If analysts such as Herzog are right, the tobacco companies have to get involved to protect not just their profits, but perhaps their future, said Blake Brown, a professor of agriculture and resource economics at N.C. State University and an extension economist who specializes in tobacco issues.

&#x93 They can&#x92 t afford not to do this,&#x94 he said. &#x93 If you&#x92 re a tobacco company, you don&#x92 t want to be the next Eastman Kodak. They didn&#x92 t understand that they were in the image business. They thought they were in the film business.&#x94

This shift in history doesn&#x92 t seem lost on Big Tobacco. Lorrillard has a research and development team based in Silicon Valley. And at a Reynolds American media event in June, company President Daan Delen, tieless and in a sports jacket, roamed a stage at Pier 59 in New York, channeling the late Apple founder Steve Jobs as he unveiled Vuse. In interviews, Reynolds executives frequently use words such as &#x93 transformative&#x94 and &#x93 game changing&#x94 for their new venture.

The drop in domestic tobacco consumption, which has come at an annual rate of 3 percent to 4 percent in recent years, had already been eroding cigarette manufacturing for decades. Tobacco manufacturing employment in North Carolina is about a quarter of what it was at its peak half a century ago.

Reynolds now declines to specify where its 5,200 U.S. workers are located, but in 2012 it reported that roughly 2,100 were in the Winston Salem area. Like many other tobacco related companies, it has seen its workforce drop substantially, from about 15,000 tobacco manufacturing workers in 1987 in the Winston Salem area.

The chance to reverse that erosion isn&#x92 t lost on Reynolds executives.

&#x93 One of the things that I communicate to my team is that if we&#x92 re successful, we see jobs happening here,&#x94 Cordisco said. &#x93 We&#x92 re bringing jobs back to this company, and that&#x92 s what&#x92 s exciting.&#x94

She declined to give employment numbers but said that RJR Vapor Co. has created jobs in several states, some within the company, some with suppliers. In Kansas, it makes the cartridges. In its Tobaccoville manufacturing complex near Winston Salem, it does the final packaging.

For now, the number of employees working for e cigarette companies is relatively small because the industry is small, said Herzog, the analyst.

&#x93 Just to put it in perspective, retail sales (of e cigarettes) were $1.8 billion in the U.S. last year, estimated, and that compares to an $85 billion combustible cigarette market,&#x94 she said. &#x93 But I certainly expect that consumption of e cigs will pass consumption of combustible cigarettes in the next 10 years, and as that trajectory continues, absolutely you&#x92 re going to see companies get larger and hire more employees.&#x94

For now, most e cigarette companies, including Lorillard&#x92 s Blu, have their devices made in China, though Blu gets its liquid from a company in Wisconsin.

Herzog believes that it&#x92 s likely others will follow Reynolds&#x92 path and move the manufacturing to the United States, where they can better control quality. Federal regulations, which are widely expected to come soon from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, may include standards that would push more companies to make e cigarettes in the U.S., she said.

The magic of clary sage

The potential upside to e cigarettes also may include farmers.

For much of tobacco&#x92 s history in North Carolina, the state&#x92 s climate and soil were natural advantages that helped them produce a product of high quality and good taste. Farmers could fend off tobacco produced in countries where the labor was cheaper, or the climate so hot year round that two crops were possible.

But one potential competitive advantage North Carolina farmers have for any e cigarette comes from good luck Avoca,
a large botanical extraction company, is located in Bertie County near Edenton, not far from many of the state&#x92 s top tobacco producing counties.

There, it mainly has been extracting a fixative from a type of sage that helps scents last longer in perfumes and things such as laundry products. Farmers are now growing thousands of acres of the purple flowered clary sage in the area.

Last fall, Richmond, Va. based Universal Leaf, the top vendor of leaf tobacco in the world, and Avoca announced a joint venture called AmeriNic that&#x92 s already extracting nicotine from tobacco and is planning to begin commercial sales this year, company leaders said in an emailed response to questions.

The partners believe it to be the only operation in the country that extracts and purifies nicotine, an addictive stimulant in tobacco and a crucial ingredient in most e cigarette &#x93 juice.&#x94

Farmers are watching the venture closely.

&#x93 We think there is an opportunity, and we want to be the ones to fill that need,&#x94 said Graham Boyd, executive vice president of the Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina.

It&#x92 s unclear how much tobacco e cigarette makers will need and where they will get it. In its response to questions, Universal Leaf declined to say where it plans to get its tobacco for extraction but said that its efforts to breed plants specifically for nicotine production were being done here, at least in part.

&#x93 At this time, we are evaluating various sourcing options,&#x94 the company said. &#x93 Given our long history of purchasing quality tobaccos in North Carolina, we have included farms in the state as part of our R&D effort.&#x94

The need for nicotine

Dr. Loren Fisher, an associate professor of crop science and extension tobacco specialist at NCSU, said one advantage that North Carolina has in trying to reap some benefit from e cigarettes is its centuries of hard won knowledge about breeding and growing tobacco. He thinks it will be relatively easy to develop plants that are efficient little green factories for producing large amounts of nicotine, as opposed to the current goals of taste and the quality of the leaves.

&#x93 I think we know right now what it takes to breed plants that would produce more nicotine,&#x94 he said.

For the short term, growing tobacco for nicotine could turn out to be mainly an additional market, he said, rather than just a way to replace declining sales form the domestic market. That&#x92 s because most of the state&#x92 s tobacco crop is now exported and its foreign customers are feeling less effect from e cigarette competition.

For now, Troxler said, North Carolina&#x92 s tobacco crop seems to have stabilized, mainly because of overseas demand. Chinese demand for tobacco is rising, and last summer China&#x92 s national tobacco company opened an office in Raleigh as a base for its American tobacco buying operations.

But foreign demand may not remain steady, particularly if e cigarettes also start making strong inroads overseas.

The pace of the e cigarette revolution could be affected by the nature of federal regulations that are believed to be in the pipeline. It also could be slowed by factors such as the emergence of other new kinds of tobacco products, or accelerated by something that Big Tobacco is likely to prove good at advances in technology that make e cigarettes even more attractive to smokers, Herzog said.

It also could be slowed if e cigarettes are hit with taxes by governments desperate to make up for lost revenue from the drop in traditional cigarette sales.

Cigarettes are the largest cause of preventable deaths e cigarettes are believed to be significantly safer, but there is little research on their health effects. There is a debate among public health officials about how much to encourage smokers to switch to e cigarettes by doing things like keeping taxes on them low. Some worry that the devices, with available flavors such as custard, berry or apple pie, encourage use by children.

Brown, the NCSU tobacco economist, believes that something will bring big changes to the market, though he says it&#x92 s still too early to say that it will be e cigarettes.

Philip Morris, he noted, recently announced that it&#x92 s investing $680 million in a new Italian plant that would make noncombustible cigarettes, devices in which tobacco is heated just enough to give off inhalants, but not enough to burn.

&#x93 There may not be smoking in five years, but there will be something different, whether it&#x92 s e cigarettes or noncombustibles or something, but it&#x92 s going to be changed dramatically,&#x94 Brown said. &#x93 And to predict how it will change, and how that will affect manufacturing is difficult right now.&#x94

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