WASHINGTON -- Smokers of cigarettes labeled low in tar and nicotine may be getting more of those substances than they think, Federal Trade Commission officials and experts in smoking now agree. And they attribute the problem to testing that has not kept up with the changes in cigarette design over the last 20 years.
Since 1971, when the results of the tests were first printed in cigarette advertising and on packaging, cigarettes labeled low in tar and nicotine have taken over the market, now accounting for 60 percent of the cigarettes sold in this country.
National polls conducted by the Gallup organization have found that smokers believe that the cigarettes labeled "light" are less hazardous and will give them less tar and nicotine.
But evidence has accumulated that the measurements, which are carried out by tobacco company laboratories under the supervision of the FTC, bear little or no relation to how much nicotine and tar smokers actually get from smoking.
"The commission has been aware for a while that the test has problems regarding the actual intake that consumers will get," Judith D. Wilkenfeld, assistant director in the FTC's Division of Advertising Practices, said in a telephone interview.
"We know that consumers do not smoke in exactly the same manner as the machine" used in the testing, she said. "So the tests will not predict the actual human consumption."
She said the FTC was actively looking at alternatives to the tar and nicotine tests, and she added that the pressure to make a decision has increased lately.
The FTC cigarette tests are carried out by machines that hold the cigarettes and draw air through them in 2-second puffs, repeating the puffs once every minute until the cigarette is burned down to the filter.
But cigarettes now include several features that make the machine tests meaningless, according to Dr. Jack E. Henningfield, chief of clinical pharmacology research at the National Institutes on Drug Abuse.
For example, a majority of cigarettes now have tiny, nearly invisible holes in their filter paper, or in the cigarette paper near the filter.
When the smoking machine draws on a cigarette, a large amount xTC of air is drawn in, and this dilutes the smoke getting to the measuring device, making today's cigarettes appear to contain less tar and nicotine.
