NOVA Online | Search for a Safe Cigarette | NOVA News Minutes Transcript

NOVA News Minutes
Alternative Cigarettes
(running time 01:24)

Transcript
May 23, 2003

NARRATOR: Each day, nearly 4,800 adolescents smoke their first cigarette, and nearly 2,000 of them will become regular smokers. That's almost two million annually.

GREG CONNOLLY (Massachusetts Department of Public Health): Of all the people alive in this world today, we expect half a billion will be killed by cigarette smoking—two-thirds in poor countries. And of those two-thirds, half are children under the age of 18.

NARRATOR: Now some teenagers are smoking cigarettes they perceive to be safer and more natural—additive-free cigarettes and hand-rolled unfiltered cigarettes from India called bidis. Bidis are especially appealing to teens because they are cheaper than regular cigarettes and come in flavors like strawberry and chocolate. As shown on PBS's NOVA, regular cigarettes are filled with chemical additives, but research shows that what makes a cigarette toxic is the burning of the tobacco, and what makes it addictive is nicotine.

MITCH ZELLER (Pinney Associates, Inc.): Once you're addicted to the nicotine and you go on to smoke for decades and put all those other poisonous compounds into your body, that's what shortens your life. Not the nicotine, but the repeated exposure to the other harmful compounds in smoke.

NARRATOR: Studies show that bidis and additive-free cigarettes deliver more nicotine and tobacco smoke toxins than regular cigarettes, and that smokers smoke them longer and take more puffs. So a cigarette is still a cigarette, even one that's additive-free and chocolate-flavored. I'm Brad Kloza.