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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,
2) Fast-acting nicotine, or
3) Swedish tobacco snuff, oral or nasal;
and
to use these products for a year or so to prevent relapse to smoking.
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.smokeless.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 2006, fast acting pure
nicotine is not yet in production.
- Smokers cannot buy oral snuff in
the shops but have to order low risk smokeless tobacco (Swedish
snuff), for personal use, via internet or mail order. The
biggest manufacturer is Swedish Match.
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Can cigarette toxicity
be regulated?
It can be regulated, but can it 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 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
dangerously delusional thinking.
Regulation of
cigarettes does not affect the number sold, the numbers smoking them
or how they smoke them.
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