NOVA Online | Search for a Safe Cigarette | NOVA News Minutes Transcript 2

NOVA News Minutes
"Safe" Cigarette Fails
(running time 01:35)

Transcript
May 30, 2003

NARRATOR: Compared to regular cigarettes, this cigarette has 53 percent less of a cancer-causing toxin called "NNK". It's one of several so-called "reduced risk" cigarettes on the market. But is it really any safer when someone lights one up and inhales? Researchers at the University of Minnesota took a group of smokers and had them switch to a reduced-risk cigarette for four weeks. They found that while the cigarettes have 53 percent less NNK, the smokers' bodies still tested high.

STEPHEN HECHT (University of Minnesota's Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center): Based on our results so far, there doesn't appear to be any great benefit of switching to this particular product.

NARRATOR: Why wasn't the reduction in NNK passed along to the smokers? As shown on PBS's NOVA, tobacco companies determine a cigarette's toxicity by testing it in a smoking machine. But it turns out that people just don't smoke the way machines do.

STEPHEN HECHT (University of Minnesota's Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center): They may inhale more deeply, or they may puff more frequently, or they may puff harder on a cigarette.

NARRATOR: Hecht says if cigarettes are going to be marketed as safer, they should be subject to Food and Drug Administration oversight, which would mean testing them in humans first.

STEPHEN HECHT (University of Minnesota's Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center): They need to be evaluated in much the same way that new drugs are evaluated when they go on the market.

NARRATOR: With or without FDA regulation, two major tobacco companies are already moving forward with these kinds of cigarettes. RJ Reynolds is nationally advertising its "Eclipse" cigarette, while Philip Morris will release what it prefers to call a "reduced exposure" cigarette sometime this year. I'm Brad Kloza.