Smokers believe light or herbal cigarettes are less harmful

Nearly one-fourth of cigarette smokers believe that so-called reduced-exposure tobacco products - such as "light," herbal or reduced nicotine cigarettes - are less harmful to their health than conventional cigarettes, a new study finds. However, such beliefs are not backed up by existing evidence, according to the study's authors.

Smokers need to know that the risks of cigarette smoking are the same, despite claims from cigarette manufacturers touting new brands that supposedly reduce risk, according to the article in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"There is no evidence that smokers will switch to these kinds of cigarettes, but one study has shown that viewing an ad for such products caused a near immediate drop in intention to quit smoking," says study coauthor, Richard O'Connor, Ph.D., of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y. "We have previous examples of filters and 'lights' both promoted explicitly and implicitly as reducing the health risks of smoking. Most smokers already use them although there is no evidence they really deliver fewer toxins or reduce health risk."

The study also examined smokers' knowledge of smokeless tobacco products such as snuff and chewing tobacco and found 82 percent had heard of such products but only 10 percent believed they were safer than regular cigarettes. "Here, smokers are misinformed in the opposite direction," the authors write. "Epidemiologic data suggest that SLT products sold in the United States are significantly less dangerous than cigarettes."

The researchers conducted a telephone survey of 2,028 U.S. adult current smokers; 39 percent had heard of "less harmful" cigarettes but only 27 percent could name a specific brand. Respondents over age 55 were more likely to have heard of such products.

"The power of advertising is very great," says Norman H. Edelman, M.D., chief medical officer for the American Lung Association. "So-called lighter cigarettes do not reduce disease. And people tend to smoke according to the nicotine level they crave, so they might actually smoke more if they smoke lighter cigarettes."

"These data suggest that smokers are confused and misled by cigarette marketing, even when such marketing does not include overt health messages," the authors write. "Companies looking to market reduced-exposure tobacco products should be required to demonstrate convincingly that smokers will not be confused or misled by the marketing claims."

The researchers stress that future research should focus on methods of communicating relative risk information to smokers and on determining what smokers mean when they classify a product as safer or less harmful.

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