Cigarettes and their contents

OK, I am a smoker… I know it isn’t good… I know.
I was wondering… If I understand correctly Nicotine is the substance that makes tobacco addictive. The worse/bad things are actually tar and some other toxins in those cigarettes.
With all our modern time science, couldn’t they come out with a safer cigarette? I know some brand say they are safer but I mean, giant breakthrough non-health threatning cigarette should be do-able. It wouldn’t be hurtful for the tobacco companies because nicotine would still make us smokers buy them but the health issue would be “fixed” because it would not be dangerous anymore (or so much less).

It sounds way to simple to accually be faisable, but I still wonder…

Any comments/ideas/knowledge to share with me?

Thanks in advance Dopers

I believe such a thing has been tried, but was not terribly successful. From the point of view of the tobacco companies, it would be implying “This product will kill you more slowly than our other products” or something like that; they have not always been all that happy to admit that there are any risks associated with the use of their products.

The tobacco companies have nothing to say about it. The best way to make tobacco less harmful is to ADD nicotine, reducing the amount of smoke you need to inhale to get your fix. That’s against the law. They could add certain substances to reduce the harm done by tar, but the necessary claims (“it’s better for you”) are also against the law.

If it’s pure nicotine you want, simply switch to nicotine patches or nicotine gum. I have no idea whether it costs more, but it’s surely a lot safer to slap on a patch or two every day than to huff down a few garbage-bags full of smoke every day.

Besides, nobody will ever tell you, “There’s no patching allowed in this building.”

A safer cigarette would be one that doesn’t burn.

Burning complex organic compounds will produce a lot of free radicals and Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons.

I chew Copenhagen, eliminating a lot of the risks of smoking. Yet, smokeless tobacco is still far from “safe”.

I’m thinking you probably mean polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, given that by definition a hydrocarbon is polynuclear…

I’m by no means trying to pick a fight here but owing to the nature of addictive substances, this might be a bad idea. If we were to bump up the ammount of nicotine in your average smoke, in time would we not expect to see an increase in tolerance? Ifn’ that’s the case folks might end up smoking more to account for the increased need.

Then again perhaps nicotine’s a bit different and an increased dose enatails a longer duration of effect (thus reducing the physiological urge to smoke).

Consider the Consumers Union’s Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs, especially the following studies:

In the 1980’s RJ Reynolds spend $325 million to develop a smokeless cigarette “Premiere” that literally stank. It was test marketed in 1989 and pulled shortly thereafter. It forms part of the story line in “Barbarians at the Gate”. It had a small amount of “tobacco extract” (i.e., nicotine) that was heated via a metal rod from the “burning end” (whose smoke did not get to the filter end). But then they came up with the “Eclipse” which was also cancelled. Etc.