Research in the United States which suggests that the amount of nicotine in cigarettes is increasing should serve as a warning to Irish consumers, anti-tobacco campaigners said yesterday.
A study by the school of public health at Harvard University found that the amount of nicotine smokers typically inhale per cigarette rose by 11 per cent over a seven-year period.
According to the researchers, cigarette-makers also intensified the concentration of nicotine in their tobacco and modified cigarette designs to increase the number of puffs per cigarette, in order to boost the amounts of nicotine inhaled by smokers.
The end result is a product that is potentially more addictive, the study claims.
Prof Luke Clancy of campaign group Ash Ireland said there was no reason to suggest the trend in Ireland was any different from that in the US. At a time when the industry has claimed that it is making its products safer, Prof Clancy stressed that he was opposed to moves to make the industry and its products more acceptable.
"The problem is that we're dealing with a product which has no benefits. . . the only reason it exists is to make profits for multinational industries," he said.
Prof Clancy said that while the Department of Health and Children had introduced some significant anti-smoking measures, such as the smoking ban, the Government had failed to introduce sufficiently high price increases and the use of more graphic imagery as an educational tool.
The researchers at Harvard analysed data submitted by major cigarette brands to the Massachusetts department of public health in the USA. Last August, the department released its own study showing that nicotine levels were steadily rising.
The Harvard analysis found that the amount of nicotine that smokers typically consume per cigarette, regardless of brand per year rose by an average of 1.6 per cent between 1998 and 2005. Massachusetts has required tobacco companies to submit annual reports on cigarette nicotine yields since 1997.
Tobacco manufacturers Phillip Morris said its data reported to Massachusetts from 1997 to 2006 reflected "random variations in cigarette nicotine yields, both upwards and downwards".
At 1.86 mg per cigarette, the nicotine yield in its Marlboro cigarettes was the same in 1997 and 2006, it added.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Children said it was studying the findings of the report. "If the findings are replicated in the Irish context, we would be concerned," he said.