Bulletin: Cigarettes Remain Dangerous to Your Health

The drug pusher companies known as Big Tobacco, those anachronistic but determined manufacturers of nicotine delivery systems, have been smoked out for marketing their deathly products in a manner misleading to their addicted buyers.

Even before the 1964 surgeon general's report warned consumers that cigarettes may be harmful to our health, advertisers were assuring doubtful smokers their tar-, nicotine-, flavoring- and preservative-laced packs of rolled-up tobacco were smoked by more doctors than any other brand.

Effective on Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration, now regulating cigarette labeling, will ban selling cancer sticks promoted as low tar, mild or otherwise suggesting they are less lethal than other coffin nails. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) concluded that people who switch to so-called light cigarettes typically compensate, consuming enough nicotine to satisfy their craving by inhaling more deeply, taking longer or more frequent drags and smoking a few extra cigarettes each day. "More than half of daily American smokers – including nearly two-thirds of women who smoke – say they smoke brands marketed as 'light' or 'ultra-light,'" according to health advocates at the nonprofit Tobacco Free Kids.

As we all suspected, products marketed to appear less risky are every bit as dangerous to the health of the users and victims of second-hand smoke as the full-flavored and regular varieties of smokes. Through the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, enacted one year ago, the FDA is cracking down.

Not surprisingly, however, just as Don Draper counseled his Lucky Strike clients in the first season of "Mad Men": "We can say anything we want" ("It's toasted!") -- tobacco manufacturers are weaseling by switching packaging to color-coded boxes that signal healthier option misconceptions. R.J. Reynolds has changed Salem Lights and Ultra Lights to "Gold Box" and "Silver Box."

Thursday, Philip Morris Company had its wrist slapped by the FDA for attempting to perpetuate customers' mistaken belief their "light" cigarettes are less harmful than other cigarettes. ("Your Marlboro Lights pack is changing. But your cigarette stays the same . . . ask for 'Marlboro in the gold pack.'").

Maybe the FDA should insist on less ambiguous poison warnings? I suggest they start with "deadly," "equally deadly" and "no healthier than any other brand."