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Five Things the Tobacco Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

  1. “Cigarette companies intentionally designed cigarettes with enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction.”
  2. “Cigarette companies control the impact and delivery of nicotine in many ways, including designing filters and selecting cigarette paper to maximize the ingestion of nicotine, adding ammonia to make the cigarette taste less harsh, and controlling the physical and chemical make-up of the tobacco blend.”tobacco industry
  3. “Low tar and filtered cigarette smokers inhale essentially the same amount of tar and nicotine as they would from regular cigarettes.”
  4. “More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined.”
  5. “Secondhand smoke causes lung cancer and coronary heart disease in adults who do not smoke. Children exposed to secondhand smoke are at an increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), acute respiratory infections, ear problems, severe asthma, and reduced lung function.”

A team led by researchers at the University of South Carolina surveyed 1,404 adult smokers for their reactions to these five “corrective statements,” which a federal judge ordered the tobacco industry to include on cigarette packages and other materials beginning in 2013.

Unfortunately, the corrective statements have yet to make their debut. The tobacco industry appealed the ruling, and for good reason: study results show that for each statement, between 1/3 and 1/2 of adult smokers said that the information was new to them. These respondents were more likely to report feeling angry at the tobacco industry and more likely to feel motivated to quit smoking compared to those who did not find the information to be new.

The study also found that reactions to the statements differed between racial/ethnic groups. African Americans and Latinos, who suffer disproportionately from smoking-related conditions such as cardiovascular disease, were more likely than non-Hispanic Whites to report that the statements were new to them. They were also more likely to report feeling angry at the industry and more likely to report feeling motivated to quit smoking.

These findings suggest that if shared widely, corrective statements can inform consumers, thus helping to prevent smoking, encourage quitting, and reduce smoking-related health disparities. Read more here and chime in—did any of the corrective statements catch you off guard? How effective do you think statements will be in motivating people to quit smoking?