Low-tar cigarettes just as deadly

LONDON - Low-tar cigarettes do not reduce a smoker's risk of developing lung cancer and are as deadly as regular brands, say researchers.

In the first study to compare the odds of developing cancer between smokers of low, ultra-low and conventional cigarettes, scientists in the United States found a similar raised risk in all groups.

People who smoked non-filter cigarettes had the highest rate of the disease.

"Our study is the strongest evidence yet that the design changes in cigarettes marketed as light and ultra-light have not made them less deadly," said Dr Michael Thun, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society.

"The only approach that reliably reduces risk is to quit - and to quit as soon as possible."

Tobacco smoke contains about 4000 chemicals, more than 50 of them proven carcinogens. Most of them are in tar.

Cigarettes described as light, mild, ultra and low tar produce low tar readings on machines that measure smoke intake because filters on the cigarettes dilute the damaging toxins.

But health experts and anti-smoking groups have always maintained they are no safer than regular cigarettes because smokers compensate by either taking bigger or more frequent puffs or inhaling more strongly.

Tim Lord, chief executive of the Tobacco Manufacturers Association in London, said low-tar cigarettes were never promoted as healthier. "The only safe cigarette is no cigarette."

But Amanda Sandford, of the anti-smoking group Ash (Action on Smoking and Health), said the promotion of low-tar cigarettes, particularly to women, had health implications even if it was not overtly saying they were safer.

"The level of tar in a cigarette doesn't matter. It is still going to cause cancer if you continue to smoke for many years."

Dr Thun and Dr Jeffrey Harris, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and their colleagues studied the relation between tar ratings of cigarettes smoked in 1982 and deaths from lung cancer over six years in more than one million men and women.

"The increase in lung cancer risk is similar in people who smoke medium-tar cigarettes [15-21mg], low-tar [8-14mg], or very-low-tar cigarettes [less than 7mg]," the scientists said in a report in The British Medical Journal.

All the people in the study who smoked, regardless of the tar level of the cigarettes, had a substantially higher chance of suffering from lung cancer than people in the study who had quit or had never smoked.

Non-filter cigarettes comprised about 1 per cent of cigarettes sold in the US but 20 per cent in China, 15 per cent in France and between 6 and 20 per cent in Eastern Europe in 1996.

- REUTERS