Do You Smoke Light Cigarettes?

Do you think you’re safe when you smoke “light” cigarettes and “ultra light” cigarettes? No, you are not! “Light” smokes are no safer than regular smokers:

It’s official: Cigarettes labeled as "light" and "mild" will be banned within the European Union (EU)

Cigarettes made within the EU for sale or export will have limits on their levels of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide as of January 1, 2004

3 of Canada's largest tobacco companies, Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., Rothmans Benson & Hedges Inc. and JTI-Macdonald Corp, will stop describing their cigarettes as "light" or "mild" by the middle of 2007, health regulators said

"There are now at least 39 countries that have banned [the "light" and "mild" cigarette] terms and in all cases it is because of legislation not because of voluntary actions," Rob Cunningham of the Canadian Cancer Society said. The tobacco industry had been asked to voluntarily drop the labels in 2001 but had refused to do it then, he added

South Africa now bans "misleading labelling" on cigarette packets, including words such as "light" and "mild" (March 29, 2007) in addition to existing smoking bans inside public buildings and parts of restaurants.

Hong Kong health department officials issued a low-tar cigarette warning after a survey of 93 cigarette brands revealed smokers of so-called light cigarettes faced the same risk of smoke-related diseases like lung cancer as other smokers.

'Low tar' label and 'light' label now prohibited in marketing cigarettes overseas by tobacco companies. There is no justification for concluding that Congress intended to allow the tobacco companies "to tell the rest of the world that 'low tar/light' cigarettes are less harmful to health when they are prohibited from making such fraudulent representations to the American public," Judge Gladys Kessler wrote (March 2007).

"Over the course of more than 50 years, defendants (tobacco companies) lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public, including smokers and the young people they avidly sought as 'replacement smokers,' about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke (second-hand smoke)," US District Judge Gladys Kessler said in 2006. She ordered tobacco companies to stop labeling cigarettes as "low tar," "light," "ultra light" or "mild," since such cigarettes have been found to be no safer than others because of how people smoke them

A US District Court judge has given the green light to a class-action lawsuit on behalf of smokers of "light" cigarettes, who seek $200 billion in damages from tobacco companies in September 25, 2006

Cigarette maker Philip Morris USA was ordered to pay $10.1 billion for misleading smokers into believing its "light" cigarettes are less harmful than regular cigarettes by Illinois Judge Nicholas Byron on Friday March 21, 2003

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