Hendra Kharisma

Have you ever wanted to quit smoking and convinced yourself than you are destined to smoke cigarettes the rest of your life? Have you ever tried to quit and gave up halfway thought the day or that same night? If you think that quitting smoking is just impossible, I would read on.

It truly is not as hard as you may think. Take it from a true one packer a day smoker or better on some days. It was like a true friend to me that I couldn’t let go. I have smoked a good thirty to thirty six years of my life. I’m not quite sure when I started smoking. I quit one time about ten years ago for a week. The big mistake I made back then was to ask a friend for a smoke so I could see what I was missing. That was a big mistake! I was back full time again and tried several times since and failed on all attempts except the last attempt.

Quitting smoking for me was always like a ritual that I attempted two or three times a year. The excuse was always the cost of cigarettes. Never did I complain about the possible ill effects that it could possibly have down the road. Sure I was aware everyday about how bad it was. I heard it on the news every day on how the smokers were getting the boot in restaurants and buildings. The worst people to smoke around were the non-smokers that quit smoking. I know, my wife quit ten years ago. I smoked outside come rain, snow or blizzard. I hope as a non-smoker I never get like that.

I was not a very pleasant person to be around when I attempted to quit. I’m sure smokers know how short tempered one can get, when one has not had a cigarette for a while. Every morning I attempted to be a non-smoker, I set myself up for failure by having a coffee and shortly after breakfast I ran around outside hoping to bump into someone who smoked. I always had a nic fit around lunch and dinnertime, only to give in to the craving over and over again. I did not last a good part of a day. I just about gave up trying to quit. I was convinced that I was going to smoke the rest of my life. I thought I was hooked for good, until one sunny afternoon around 3:oopm I had my last cigarette while I was washing my jeep.

Everybody tells me that I was ready. I really don’t know if I was ready. What I do know is there are several key things that I had to do to give it up completely, and I am not really sure of the one key thing that kept me a non-smoker two months later. I know that one of the key things that helped was telling myself once and a while that I was a non-smoker even when I knew I smoked. I would not say it out loud if people were around me that knew I smoked. They would probably think I was losing it. I told myself that I was a non-smoker for about two weeks prior to quitting. Self-preparation you may want to call it. I truly knew that I wanted to quit. Maybe I was ready.

That sunny afternoon I had one cigarette left which I smoked halfway through washing my jeep. I told my wife that I was not going to buy any more that afternoon. She heard me say that many times before. She told me to give a try and purchase some later and not to be hard on myself for a least trying. Again she repeated it was okay to buy some later. I think my wife just about gave up on me quitting as well.

The other key thing to do if you are attempting to quit is to learn how to procrastinate. That same afternoon I kept putting off buying cigarettes until bedtime. Bedtime came and it was too late to go to the store. I put it off until the next morning.

Morning came and I convinced myself that I was a non-smoker. I decided the other key thing to do was invite my weaknesses. I had coffee, which they say you shouldn’t do. I almost stopped my brother-in-law from coming over that same night because he smoked. I told my wife to have him come over, but he had to smoke outside alone. I thought about it for a moment and decided I was going to stand outside and watch him smoke. They also said not to drink beer or alcohol when you’re attempting to quit smoking. I bought myself a six-pack and drank and watched him smoke. That was the very first day. I finally quit and had no craving the next day. The nic fits were gone! The cravings were gone! The grumpiness from not smoking was gone! The wasted dollars on cigarettes was gone! It was like being born again.

The one key goal on quitting smoking for me was to convince myself a couple weeks before, that I was a non-smoker. Quitting halfway through the day was the other key thing to do. Think about that for a second. The day for me was not as long as it would have been if I quit first thing in the morning. When you quit in the morning, you have approximately 16 hours to go before you go to bed and forget about it. I quit at 3:00 in the afternoon with only 8 hours until bedtime to forget about it. It was half the amount of time to put everything to rest. I had a 16-hour jump to get the nicotine out of my system before the morning. Quitting in the morning was always tough before, because smoking and a cup of coffee was always an enjoyment for me.

The last key thing to do was just learn to say no for the remainder of the next day. The craving was not as bad as it was on other days that I quit. It must have had something to do with the time I quit. The craving was not as bad as prior attempts. The next day I could not understand why I smoked all that time. The addiction is finally gone and I do not want to pick up that cigarette to see what I am missing!

Just convince yourself that you are a non-smoker for approximately two weeks.

Finish that last cigarette half way through the day when you are doing something that you enjoy. Make sure you are in a good mood!

Do not tell anybody that you’re quitting. Just tell them you are not buying any for the rest of the day.

Learn to procrastinate for 6 to 8 hours, which shouldn’t be too hard for some of us.

Face all your weaknesses that you think will put you back on the smoking train.

Say no for one day! Say no for one day! Say no for one day!

Day three will set you free!!!

If you’re a smoker, we know that it’s very difficult to convince yourself of the need to quit smoking. But we assure you, there are just so many reasons why you have to quit smoking. So before we proceed with helpful tips to quit smoking, let’s enumerate the benefits that you’ll enjoy once you quit smoking.

Why don’t we concentrate on the lighter side first? People who smoke tend to have bad breath and yellow teeth. Once you quit smoking however, you’ll never have to restrain yourself with a slight smile – one that doesn’t show your teeth to your disadvantage, that is. And you don’t have to worry anymore if you’re going to turn your date off with your wonderfully stale breath!

The second advantage that you’ll enjoy once you quit smoking is that most people would tend to have a better impression of you. Nowadays, only a few people are untouched by nicotine addiction and if you’re not into smoking, people would tend to think that you’re a disciplined and reliable person.

But those are just the lighter side of things. Let’s concentrate next on the cold hard facts. Once you quit smoking, changes could start happening in your life in just twenty minutes.

In less than half an hour, your heartbeat immediately drops – and by the way that’s a good thing because when you smoke, your heart rate is higher than normal. In half a day, the carbon monoxide level in your body goes back to normal as well. In two to twelve weeks, you’ll enjoy even more health-related benefits such as improved circulation and increased lung function. In nine months at most, you’ll be in possession of cleaner and better lungs and the tendency to cough will greatly decrease. Lastly, you’ll also feel that you’re not as short of breath as you used to be.

One year after your decision to quit smoking, your excess risk of having a heart coronary disease is already 50% less of a smoker’s.

In as early as five years after your decision to quit smoking, the chances that you’ll have a stroke is already equal to that of a non-smoker!

In as early as a decade, the probability that you’ll die of lung cancer – which is the fate of most people who don’t want to quit smoking – is half of a continuing smoker already! And in fifteen years’ time, the likelihood that you’ll experience heart coronary disease – one of the most serious risks that all chain smokers face – is that of a non-smoker’s!

Smoking cigarettes is an expensive habit. An ordinary cigarette smoker incurs enormous cost to sustain this unhealthy lifestyle and the costs do not pertain solely to the smoker. There are negative effects of cigarette smoking to the body, to the immediate family, to society, and to the economy.

The most obvious cost of smoking cigarettes is the daily, weekly and monthly financial cost. Cigarettes now cost an average of $4.00 per pack. Imagine smoking a pack of cigarettes per day at $4.00 per day. The money spent on cigarette smoking could amount to almost $1500 in a year! Just think what you could do with that kind of money. However, the costs of cigarette smoking are not solely financial. The number of smoking related diseases such as cancer, respiratory problems and heart ailments increase yearly while a cigarette smoker may have his life expectancy reduced by 10-15 years.

Medical expenditures will also have to be addressed as most, if not all, smoke related illnesses require treatment, services and medication. Health care services are not cheap.

At the same time, there will be lost productivity when the cigarette smoker is forced to retire to the hospital bed and refrain from working. Thus the earning capacity declines. Instead of bringing in more money to the household, the money had to be taken out.

The environment of the smoker will also deteriorate because of the fumes. The car is one place where the smoker could comfortably light up a cigarette. Definitely, the interior will smell, ashes will accumulate and upholstery may get burn holes. Same thing goes if the smoker freely lights up anywhere inside his or her house.

Furthermore, cigarette smoking gives a higher risk of starting a fire. Countless fires have originated from a cigarette left lit.

Smokers also harm their neighbors through secondhand smoke. Non-smokers exposed to the carbons emitted are susceptible to smoking related diseases. If these exposed non-smokers have illnesses, secondhand smoking could further aggravate the situation.

In acquiring insurance policies, there is the trend now to charge higher premiums to smokers since the cigarette smoker is considered a high-risk.

Cigarette smoking also affects the overall aesthetics of the person. These are offshoots of smoking that cannot be disregarded as they affect the self regard of the person and also his or her relationship with others. Rectifying these could actually cost money. For example, having yellow teeth means extra charge from the dentist aside from the usual cleaning.

Smoking cigarettes also makes clothes dirty and the results often require the services of a dry cleaner to be remedied. The smoke can even result in a bad smell in the skin and hair.

Of course, smoking cigarettes has emotional costs as well. The dependence to cigarette smoking when one gets addicted can be very restricting. There is also the pressure to quit smoking as the smoker realizes the harmful effects to himself and to his or her family.

Unfortunately for many, there is the constant sense of helplessness in addressing the cigarette smoking habit and its side effects. A person with a smoking-related disease will not be the only one who will suffer from these high costs of cigarette smoking. Immediate family members and friends will definitely feel the burden of this harmful addiction to smoking cigarettes.

Another frequently-repeated rationalization for the cigarette habit is: “I’d like to stop smoking, but every time I do I gain weight. And it’s worse to be overweight than it is to smoke.”

The good news is, not all smokers who stop smoking gain weight. Even if weight gain was inevitable, the average gain is only between 6 and 8 pounds. Not too much of a big deal now, isn’t it?

It isn’t the fact that a person has stopped smoking that may cause him to gain weight. It’s the fact that he substitutes the habit of overeating for the habit of smoking.

In the belief that he needs something tangible to relax tension (which he previously achieved by the mechanical movements of lighting a cigarette) a “reformed addict” may take to eating candy bars or nibbling on sweets . . . something to do, anything to do, in other words, to take his mind away from the pressing problems, and to get back some of those old, familiar gestures that are part of the habitual pattern of smoking.

The gesture of reaching for something, and picking it up, and then placing it in the mouth. The gestures and muscle movements of the lips, mouth and jaws: as many of the gestures of smoking as can be achieved, in other words, without a cigarette. You’ll soon see that this isn’t necessary either.

Do moderate intensity exercises on a regular routine. Examples are to go swimming, jogging, playing a sport or aerobics.

Cut down on unhealthy snacking. If you feel like munching, grab something healthy like a diet bar or a fruit.

Avoid alcohol or limit yourself to 1 drink a week. Alcohol can make you fat too.

Instead of having 3 main meals a day, spread them out to 6 small meals throughout the day. This can help you maintain a high metabolism throughout the day and you burn more calories.

Avoid eating past 9pm. The body’s metabolism slows down at night so food consumed past this hour will take longer to digest.

With so many dangers associated with smoking, especially the correlation between smoking and the development of lung cancer, it is amazing to see how many people continue to voluntarily take part in this activity! Why is it that these mostly mature, reasonably intelligent men and women of every nationality allow such a small object to have so much control over their lives? You’d think it would be easy to just say “NO” to this tiny little death machine, but in reality it just isn’t so.

Why? Because smoking is a habit and habits are hard to break. Interestingly even efforts to raise the price of a pack of cigarettes have failed to slow the demand. And even though they aren’t cheap, cigarettes are very easy to buy, which makes it even harder to break this habit.

Smoking is the number one contributor to lung cancer. Besides causing lung cancer, cigarette smoking can cause other health-related problems including emphysema, bronchitis, and heart disease. Combine cigarette smoking with excess weight, stress, and a sedentary lifestyle, and a person who smokes literally becomes a ticking time bomb.

Here are some interesting bits of information about smoking and lung cancer.

Any amount of smoking can ultimately cause lung cancer, but how long you have been smoking, how deeply you inhale, and how many cigarettes you smoke on a regular basis all impact the development of lung cancer. It goes without saying that people who smoke a pack or more a day and who have smoked most of their lives are significantly increasing the likelihood that lung cancer will develop.

Quitting smoking may not stop lung cancer from developing, but doing so still is highly advisable. You immediately lower your risk of developing lung cancer the moment you stop (but only when you stop for good). The body will go into repair mode within a day or two after you stop. It’s not possible to determine whether the damage that has been done internally can be corrected, but stopping is worth the gamble.

Women are just as much at risk of developing lung cancer from smoking as men are, assuming equivalent smoking patterns and history. When it comes to lung cancer, men generally get most of the attention. There are more cases of men with smoking-related lung cancer than there are women, but don’t let this statistic fool you. Women are in danger too. In fact, more women die each year from smoking-related lung cancer than from breast cancer.

Passive smoking can also cause lung cancer, even in people who do not smoke. Passive smoking is the same as inhaling second-hand smoke. If you smoke, be considerate to others who don’t. Don’t smoke in enclosed spaces such as homes or cars. This is especially important around small children who don’t even realize the dangers they’re being exposed to.

If a pregnant woman smokes, her unborn baby smokes too!

And finally smoking is the cause of 90% of the cases of lung cancer. That alone should keep you from starting!

Tip 1: Rise above the cravings

Imagine the cigarettes as crutches. You’ve always had these crutches to lean on and soon, it becomes impossible to walk without them. The important thing to learn is that as soon as you walk on your feet again, they’ll quickly regain strength. It may be a little known fact, but about half of what a smoker inhales from his cigarette is pure air. The next time you’re hit with a craving, take some deep breaths and relax. You will soon be able to rise above the craving, feel refreshed, and move on.

Tip 2: All the reasons to quit

Why do you want to quit? Do you have children? Do you want to live to see your grandchildren? Are you sick of the smell? Whatever your reasons are, write them down. Keep a daily journal of how you feel and in the very first entry list in bold letters every reason you have for quitting. List things like health reasons, expense, inconvenience, bad breath, or other reasons and make the list as long as possible. Also be sure to list how you WILL feel when you’ve kicked the habit.

Tip 3: The good, the bad and the ugly

After you complete your lists of reasons you want to quit and how you’ll feel after you’ve quit, make a list of the consequences of not quitting. Have other smokers in your family gotten cancer? Have they died? Do they have to speak through a hole in their neck? Will you be unable to pay off debt because you’re always buying cigarettes? Whatever you consequences, be sure to list all of them. As above, be sure to list the consequences (good consequences, of course) of quitting. Keep them to look forward to.

Tip 4: Break time!

Most smokers agree: a cigarette is a break. When quitting, give yourself breaks, but do something. Go for walk, eat a piece of fruit or drink some juice. This is critical because the body will be going through changes expelling all the accumulated poisons. The fruit will aid this process in many ways.

Good luck!

In general, an addiction to smoking can be a very difficult one to overcome. Depending on how long you’ve smoked, how much you smoke, and genetic factors, you may find it extremely difficult to quit smoking. It is a well known fact the genetic factors are at play and determine how susceptible someone is to a nicotine addiction, and for this reason some people need more than their will power to quit smoking. There are medical aids to quit smoking that help address the body’s dependence on nicotine, leaving you to concentrate your will power on other aspects of the addiction: namely, the social associations you likely have with smoking.

For many years the standard medical stop-smoking aid was the nicotine patch, which is attached to the skin and releases a steady supply of nicotine to the bloodstream. Fairly recently, though, another approach has become popular: the use of the drug Zyban (bupropion hydrochloride.)

Zyban’s development as an anti-smoking aid is a curious one: it was originally designed as an anti-depressant, and during clinical trials of the drug is was discovered that as a side effect, many smokers participating in the trails lost interest in cigarettes and found it very easy to quit. Further research revealed that the drug was an effective stop-smoking aid, and it was approved for use as such in 1997 by the FDA.

Zyban works in a completely different way from the nicotine patch. Instead of supplying nicotine to the bloodstream, Zyban alters brain chemistry in such a way that the desire for smoking is greatly reduced – many people find that cigarettes simply become unappealing after taking the drug. At no point does Zyban supply or regulate nicotine in the bloodstream.

To work effectively, Zyban is usually taken a few weeks before you actually stop smoking. Like all anti-depressants, it takes time for its effects to manifest. Once you’ve been taking the drug for some time, you stop smoking, and if all goes well you’ll find the process much easier than an unaided attempt.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that Zyban is a prescription drug that alters brain chemistry – in fact researchers are not even exactly sure how it works, only that it does for many people. Naturally, you doctor will be consulted in your decision to take Zyban, and it is crucial that Zyban is not taken in combination with other drugs. Make sure you talk to your doctor about the possible side effects of using Zyban to quit smoking: some common side effects include insomnia, dizziness, and dry mouth. In rarer cases, more serious side effects like seizures can occur. You must also discuss with your doctor the situations in which Zyban should not be taken, like if you are abruptly stopping the use of alcohol, or have a history of seizures.

While Zyban should be approached with some caution, as long as it is properly discussed with your doctor, it can be a very effective aid in your battle to quit smoking.

Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known. Study after study shows that one can get addicted to nicotine as quickly as cocaine and other illegal drugs that we generally associate with crippling addictions. It is for this reason, of course, that is can be so difficult to quit smoking. One top of this physical addiction – that is, the body’s craving of nicotine – there is a psychological component: because smoking is both legal and socially acceptable in many situations, it can be difficult to avoid it completely. Any attempt to quit smoking, therefore, should involve a comprehensive plan that deals with both the physical and psychological side of the addiction. One way to address the physical addition to nicotine, to leave yourself free to concentrate on the psychological aspects of your addiction, is to use a nicotine patch.

The nicotine patch is one of the oldest, and certainly best-known, medical aids to quitting smoking. Patches are placed on the skin, and work by releasing a slow and steady supply of nicotine into the bloodstream. The idea is that the patch helps wean your body off nicotine – instead of nicotine being immediately absent from your system when you quit smoking, it is gradually reduced.

The way the patch works is to break your body’s desire for nicotine “spikes.” When you smoke a cigarette, your body receives an immidiete spike in its nicotine levels. As the level of nicotine slowly dissipates after the spike, it will eventually drop to a point where you desire to have it “topped up” again – the need for another cigarette. If you picture a graph of your body’s nicotine levels when you smoke, you would see a steady series of peaks and valleys – the peaks corresponding to the spike in nicotine levels when you smoke a cigarette. A graph of your nicotine levels when wearing the patch, on the other hand, would show a steady line: the line wouldn’t be as high as your peaks, but it wouldn’t be as low as your valleys either. The idea is that the patch goes for the middle ground, and your body slowly adjusts to not having spikes in its nicotine levels.

As you become more and more used to lower levels of nicotine in your system, you can reduce the dosage of the patches you wear, until eventually your body is nicotine free. Another good thing about the patch is that it is an extremely strong deterrent against smoking: if you smoke while you’re on the patch, your levels of nicotine will become too high and you could suffer from a nicotine overdose, which can result in sickness and even death.

The patch is a very effective stop smoking aid. It does, however, have some disadvantages: it is fairly expensive, and at the early stages of quitting it can often cost more than cigarettes did. The patch can also cause problems with sleeping if you wear it to bed – and at the same time if you don’t you will wake up with no nicotine in your system, and feel pretty bad until you put on a morning patch and it starts working. Despite these drawbacks, the patch remains the medical aid of choice for people dealing with serious nicotine addictions.

An addiction to nicotine is a serious one indeed. Many studies have shown that it is one of the most addictive substances known, and most people will gain a dependency to it soon after they start smoking regularly. When you smoke a cigarette, you body receives an instant rush of nicotine – there is a spike in your nicotine levels which slowly dissipates, and when your nicotine levels drop below a certain point you will crave another spike, in the form of another cigarette.

As a smoker, part of your body’s physical addition to nicotine has to do with relieving it in these “hits,” and it is for this reason that an attempt to quit smoking can be so difficult. The most important thing in any attempt to quit smoking is willpower, and the chances that you will succeed in staying smoke free without the use of willpower are extremely slim. In same cases, however, you can benefit from using a medical aid in addition to your willpower. The most common and well known aids to quitting smoking are those that supply and regulate nicotine in the bloodstream.

A popular choice is nicotine gum. This is gum that resembles ordinary chewing gum, but of course it contains nicotine. The reason nicotine gum can be effective is because is can replicate nicotine spikes in your bloodstream without the need for cigarettes. The problem that some people run into with the nicotine patch – the other popular nicotine supplier – is that a nicotine patch supplies a steady amount of nicotine into your bloodstream. There is no spike, or “hit”, with a patch, and for this reason some people still find themselves craving cigarettes when they use the patch: even though the body is receiving nicotine, it desires the hit that the cigarette provides.

With nicotine gum, you can attempt to replicate this hit without a cigarette. The gum is not chewed like normal gum — rather you hold in your mouth without chewing it for long periods of time, and then give it a few chews when you want a release of nicotine, much as you would take a drag on a cigarette for a quick nicotine hit. A typical guideline for nicotine gum would be to chew it 3-4 times, until you feel a tingling sensation, at which point you should flatten it and place it between your cheek and gum. Repeat the brief chewing process at occasional intervals as necessary. Under no circumstances should nicotine gum be chewed like ordinary gum, as too much nicotine will be released into your bloodstream.

Nicotine Gum comes in 2mg and 4mg strengths (the 4mg is recommended if you smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day.) It is recommended that you use the gum every 1-2 hours throughout the day, for a period of up to 3 months. The only drawback of nicotine gum is that you cannot drink anything except water for 15 minutes before and during chewing. For this reason nicotine gum isn’t helpful at a bar, which is where many ex-smokers need the most help. Despite this, nicotine gum can be an effective tool — when combined with your willpower — in an attempt to quit smoking.

Tobacco was
initially used by pre-Columbian Native Americans, who smoked it in pipes and
even used it for hallucinogenic purposes in shamanic rituals. Christopher
Columbus was given tobacco by natives and introduced it Europe when he returned
from North America.

However, tobacco did not become widely used in
Europe until the middle of the 16th century, when explorers and diplomats such
as France’s Jean Nicot (for whom nicotine was named) popularized its use.

Tobacco was introduced to France in 1556, Portugal in 1558, Spain in
1559, and England in 1565.

Initially, tobacco was produced for pipe
smoking, chewing and snuff. Cigarettes were made in a crude, hand-rolled form
since the early 1600s, but did not become popular in America until after the
civil war. Cigarette sales surged with introduction of the cigarette rolling
machine by James Bonsack in 1883, in a contest sponsored by tobacco company
Allen and Ginter, who promised $75,000 to the first person to invent a fast
cigarette-rolling machine. This facilitated industrialized production and
widespread distribution of cigarettes.

Since then, nicotine addiction
has become a public-health concern in virtually every nation on Earth.

Warnings about the health risks of smoking were muted until the 1950’s
and 1960’s, when a series of unsuccessful lawsuits forced the issue into the
public eye. Not until the 1990’s would a lawsuit be won by the plaintiff.
However, the American Surgeon General first demanded that warning labels be
placed on cigarette packages started in 1966.

Both the tar and nicotine
in cigarettes are toxins, each its own way; and that’s without mentioning the
poisonous substances such as arsenic used in the curing process. Nicotine is as
addictive as heroin or cocaine, and has long-lasting effects on the brain’s
dopamine systems. The “tar” which filters attempt to remove falls into four
categories of substances: nitrosamines, widely held to be the most carcinogenic
of all the agents in tobacco smoke; aldehydes, created by the burning of sugars
and cellulose in tobacco; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which form in the
cigarette behind the burning tip; and trace amounts of heavy metals from
fertilizers used to grow the plant.

Tobacco companies were loath to
admit in public that they knew the dangers posed by their product; however, in a
sideways concession to tobacco foes, they produced what were advertised as
“safer” filtered cigarettes.

In the 1958 a scientist working for Philip
Morris went so far as to admit publicly that, “Evidence is builing up that heavy
smoking contributes to lung cancer.” He cleverly suggested that this admission
could be turned into a “wealth of ammunition” to attack the competion by
suggesting that Philip Morris, unlike its competitors, made cigarettes with
filters to screen out the toxins. In 1986 the CEO of British American Tobacco,
Patrick Sheehy, had a different opinion, and wrote that, “in attempting to
develop a “safe” cigarette you are, by implication, in danger of being
interpreted as accepting the current product is unsafe, and this is not a
position that I think we should take.”

However much tobacco executives
attempted to hide the dangers of their product from the public, increasing
market demand eventually forced all cigarette companies to develop some filter
systems for their cigarettes. Filtered cigarettes accounted for only 1 percent
of cigarette purchases in 1950, but this had soared to 87 percent by 1975.

However, the development of filtered cigarettes met two hurdles, one
medical and the other a matter of personal taste. Because smokers are nicotine
addicts, they will smoke until their craving for nicotine is satisfied. A filter
which removes nicotine will simply prompt them to inhale more deeply or smoke
more cigarettes. A filter which removes the tar components of tobacco will
remove the taste and smoking sensation to which smokers have become accustomed,
and consumers find such a product lacking in “flavor”. Due to compensatory
behavior by smokers, the amount of toxins consumed is not significantly less
than from an unfiltered cigarette, and there is no proof filtered cigarettes are
less of health risk.

Still, tobacco companies persist in their efforts
to develop better filters. Often they are hampered not by lack of technical
knowledge but by consumer behavior. In 1975, Brown and Williamson introduced a
new cigarette called Fact, with a new filter designed to selectively remove
toxic compounds such a cyanide. However the product did not please consumers,
and was removed from the market two years later.

An internet search for
“cigarette filter patent” produces 425,000 results as manufacturers strive to
outdo each over in the invention of filter materials and baffles to construct a
cigarette which they claim is less toxic but still appealing to smokers.

It is difficult to make a filter which removes tar but not nicotine, and
tobacco companies have now focused their attention on growing tobacco plants
with a higher nicotine content, in order to satisfy smokers’ nicotine addiction
with proportionately less exposure to tar. Rumors that cigarette companies
“spike”their products with extra nicotine have met with public uproar, since
cigarettes are sold as a natural agricultural product.

Scientists have
also experiments with tobacco substitutes , with ingredients such as wood pulp,
which would produce smoke flavor with less tar. Legal hurdles have stopped such
projects, as they are no longer “natural” but rather an
artificially-manufactured substance about which health claims are being made.
Such products are treated as drugs, and subject to lengthy regulatory battles
before they are allowed to be sold. For the tobacco companies, manipulating
naturally-grown tobacco leaf is cheaper and more profitable in a competitive
marketplace.

Since a cigarette is basically a delivery system for an
addictive drug, nicotine, it is theoretically possible to produce a product
which has only nicotine, without the diversion of tar. In fact, such a product
exists: the nicotine patch. At its most basic level, it has exactly the same
function as a cigarette. However, it has less social cachet than the packaging,
rituals and paraphenalia associated with smoking: it is for people who want to
wean themselves off their addiction.