British American Tobacco (BAT) developed a new type of cigarette to "fool" people into thinking they were inhaling less tar and nicotine than they actually were, according to research published today.
The study, published today in the Lancet, suggests that BAT - the world's second largest cigarette company which makes brands such as Pall Mall, Lucky Strike and Dunhill - exploited flaws in tests that were used to show the amount of these toxins in cigarettes.
Canadian researchers uncovered internal BAT documents showing the company knew that, when tested, so-called elastic cigarettes appeared to contain low levels of tar and nicotine when in fact they delivered high levels of these toxins to smokers.
The company, which sells around 900bn cigarettes a year, said today it publicised the disparities and wanted a better test of tar and nicotine levels. A BAT spokeswoman said the tobacco industry and health bodies had known for 30 years of flaws in the International Smoking Organisation (ISO) tests.
In their study, researchers from the Division of Health Studies at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, and Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada highlighted problems with the ISO test, where a cigarette is inserted in a machine to measure tar and nicotine levels.
They noted that smokers typically inhaled twice as much smoke as the ISO machine, and took twice as many puffs of a cigarette.
The team found that BAT was aware the ISO tests did not take account of the fact that smokers inhaled low-tar cigarettes more deeply and more frequently than standard brands. BAT research showed the company took account of these problems with the tests when developing elastic cigarettes, which allow smoke to be inhaled more deeply and to deliver greater levels of tar and nicotine than standard brands.
The report quoted BAT researchers and marketers, who stated that the company's aim was to "produce a cigarette which can be machine smoked at a certain tar band, but which in human hands, can exceed this tar banding". Another BAT presentation called for the development of a cigarette that could deliver "100% more" tar and nicotine than detected in the ISO tests.
In one brand test, when smokers inhaled a quarter more smoke than the ISO machine, they took in nearly twice as much nicotine and more than double the amount of tar.
The researchers said BAT knowingly used this discrepancy to promote the new cigarettes as "healthier" alternatives for smokers.
Professor David Hammond, who led the Canadian researchers, claimed there was "a deliberate strategy whereby BAT and [a subsidiary] ITL designed products that would fool their consumers and regulators into thinking these products were safer or less hazardous when they were not". He called for a more accurate test to replace those used by the ISO.
The BAT spokeswoman denied that the company had misled consumers about the level of toxins in its cigarettes. She said the tobacco industry had acknowledged in 1967 the disparity between the ISO test and smokers' intake of tar and nicotine.
She added that scientists from BAT and the World Health Organisation had worked together on a scientific panel to examine reform of the ISO tests.
