A Right To Know

I found this article to be quite interesting, so I wanted to share it with you. Please note the date on it, also take note of the 44 "selected poisons" in tobacco smoke and the reference to the 4,000 chemicals. Now, although this was a 'right to know' issue in July of 1998, I spent hours looking for a complete list and was unable to locate one anywhere.

It was with this in mind that I sent requests to the Canadian tobacco industry's “big 3” — Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., JTI-Macdonald Corp. and Rothmans, Benson and Hedges Inc. Since I have been denied any further right to choose which means of nicotine delivery service to utilize, I would at this time like to know exactly what is in these cigarettes I've been smoking for so long.

I can hardly wait to see their response, but I will most certainly be sharing them with you when they arrive, so stay tuned. If you would like to contact these companies, I have provided a means of contact on the "Manufacturer Contact" page. Please feel free to post their responses on this site if you like.

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BMJ 1998;317:101 ( 11 July )

News

Cigarette ingredients must be revealed

David Spurgeon, Quebec

The Canadian province of British Columbia is to force tobacco companies to reveal the entire contents of their cigarettes, papers, and filters. The move by health minister Penny Priddy follows the recent decision to charge tobacco companies a licence fee to sell their products in the province.

Ms Priddy will also force the companies to submit reports on 44 "selected poisons" in tobacco smoke and may later require all ingredients to be listed on tobacco packaging. "British Columbia is imposing the strongest reporting demands in the world on the tobacco industry," she said. "There are 4000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, and people are entitled to know what they are."

Robert Parker, president of the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers Council, said that the new regulations sound neither sensible nor reasonable. He said that the industry does not have the equipment to comply with the 15 September deadline for submission of additives and ingredients, and the 31 October deadline for the 44 poisons. The latter are to be assessed using test procedures developed by the federal health department. He said that the industry had not been consulted.

Fines may be imposed on companies that do not comply with the new regulations. Tobacco companies currently voluntarily provide the federal government with information on ingredients in cigarettes, but not in such detail and the information is not publicly available.

The following was a direct response to the above article

Its time to normalize control of tobacco products

Malcolm Dobbin (16 July 1998)

For historical reasons tobacco products have escaped the controls to which other products intended for human use are subject. Drugs, processed food and domestic chemicals are closely controlled, and a mandatory set of consumer information about ingredients, warning statements, and risk of use required to be included on the label.

There seems to be no good reason to exclude tobacco products from this labelling and consumer information requirement, except the limited ability to list 4000 chemicals because of the constraints of pack size.

Since cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventible mortality and morbidity, it makes good sense to provide the consumer, at the very least, with a list of chemicals known or likely to cause harm. The list could start with the 43 carcinogens so far identified by the IARC, as well as the other pharmacologically or physiologically active chemicals suspected of contributing to disease.

Some may argue that smokers already know that smoking is harmful, but I believe most smokers are unaware of the number of harmful chemicals identified so far in tobacco smoke. Smokers are a heterogeneous group, and many may be amazed and influenced by information about the rich panoply of harmful chemical ingredients and smoke constituents they are unwittingly inhaling.

This is a 'right to know' issue. Given current disclosures in internal tobacco company documents of their activities to conceal information from consumers, the time is right to take the sort of action proposed in British Columbia.

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