Tobacco Documents Online

WASHINGTON -- Smoking related disease could be reduced '°minimal levels in less than a decade" with the knowledge and .technology available today, according to Dr. Gio B. Gori, Director - of the -Smoking and Health Program of the National Cancer Institute. .. A combination of cigarette manufacturing and marketing know-how, together with changes in smoking habits, could lead to "smoke intake doses that approximate the risk of disease in smokers to nearly that of nonsmokers," Dr. Gori said. Gori, who is also Deputy_Director of the NCI Division the of Cancer Cause and Prevention, presented his/findinqs October 28 ~. in a heavily documented paper before the Institute of Medicine annual meeting. the need f or a pragmat ic approacil t. o Pointing to _ anti-smoking efforts, Gori said "it is unrealistic to expect that a society of non-smokers could-be created after a mere 20 years of public education." That smoking habits can change, he said, i-- indicated by the rising popularity of filter cigarettes which reduced the health hazard of those smokers who switched from nonfilters.

J , ~~ ~'Gori said -research has shocan that cigarettes can be ' ~~.,. . . made today in which sclecti.ve rcmov~il of speci.fic smoke components can reduce the risk to insignificant proportions -- if the number of cigarettes smoked is in the range of 10 to 20 a day. From the evidence of more than a dozen major reports that link cigarette smoking with increased ris-kk of disease, Dr. Gori concluded that only a few of the nearly 3,000 compounds found in cigarette smoke have been related to specific health hazards. For six of these compounds -- tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanide and acrolein -- he calculated a series of "critical va-lues:-" lie defined these levels as "the maximum number of cigarettes that the average individual could smoke daily without apparently incr-casing his expected risk of mortality significantly above that of a nonsmoker." Cigarettes today are about half as "strong" as those being smoked 15 years ago, as a result of progress in cigarette design and manufacturing technology. Noting that smokers a-re apparently satisfied with this marked reducticn in cigarette strength, Gori concluded it is now successfully ' possible/to mass produce and market cigarettes that will not exceed the "critical values" he has calculated. p t~J That would be 10 to 20 of the less_hazardous cigarettes ~ O half a pack to a pack -- daily which would not expose the smoker 6A to levels of smoke constituents above the levels that have been calculated as relatively safe.

Cigarettes of this kind would contain reduced tar, .nicotine'and other smoke components while still meeting current taste preferences of smokers. Dr. Gori saidi)e believes manufacturers can produce cigarettes that meet the safety requirements he has defined. Dr. Gori concluded that "the single most important anc3 potentially successful disease prevention opportunity in contemporary society can be set-in motion by responsible marketing decisions in the cigarette industry and, to a less controllable extent, through a major public education success leading smokers to new patterns' of acceptance. "