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Advice to individual
smokers
Do not trust in better
filters or low tar labels. Instead, quit smoking.
Either
1) Switch to nicotine patch or gum or
lozenge; if this does not work, try again as soon as possible, with
same products, or try:
2) Fast-acting nicotine, or
3) E-cigarette, Swedish tobacco snuff,
oral or nasal; and consider using these products for a year or so to
prevent relapse to smoking, or keeping them in reserve in case of
cravings.
In 2005, New Zealand
research ( www.healthnz.co.nz/lesstoxic30aug05.pdf
) emphasised the value of charcoal filters. Tests
were then carried out on a new cigarette brand with the most advanced
charcoal filter yet produced www.endsmoking.org.nz/MUS.pdf
It can only clean about one third of the smoke per cigarette.
Any cigarette which is a low yield cigarette for both tar
and nicotine, leads to inhalation of extra smoke. This volume of
smoke overwhelms the best of charcoal filters. However
- As of 2009, Swedish fast acting
pure nicotine is not yet sold in New Zealand.
- Nor can smokers buy oral snuff in
the shops. They have to order low risk smokeless tobacco
(Swedish snuff), for personal use, via internet or mail order
and pay full tax on any such tobacco product.
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Can cigarette toxicity
be regulated?
Cigarette manufacture can be regulated, but can they be
made less toxic? No proof exists that it can be.
Philip Morris want cigarette smoke regulated. The danger of
this approach is that
- Smoke cannot be made safe. The
risks of continuing to smoke past 35 years of age,
are one in two dying early. If this by some miracle could be
reduced to a risk of one in four, the risk would be
unacceptable.
- The regulatory effort required
overwhelms the regulatory capacity of the NZ Ministry of Health
and could take 20 years to resolve.
- Everyone meantime assumes that
cigarettes are forever permissible, if they can only be made
less dangerous.
- Cigarette regulation and emissions testing tends to
legitimize and perpetuate cigarette smoking. This is blinkered thinking.
Regulation of cigarettes does not affect
the number sold, the numbers smoking them or how they smoke them: and
it is unlikely to reduce average harm per cigarette.
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