Click here for our free newsletter. Keep the sweet consolation that cigarettes give, but avoid the threat of death. So far that dream has remained an illusion. Smoking is the largest preventable cause of death in the United States, claiming more than 400,000 victims a year. The question is fraught with peril.
Cigarettes are the equivalent of a dirty needle.
Yet public-health advocates have largely balked at cleaning them up, fearing that less toxic smokes would encourage teens to indulge and quitters to light up once again. The best thing to do is not to smoke. New understanding of the science of nicotine addiction, coupled with revelations on the sophisticated chemical engineering of the modern cigarette, is feeding interest in reducing the habit's harm, from the surgeon general and the Institute of Medicine to manufacturers eager to turn a new leaf. At the end of the month, Star Scientific Inc., of Chester, Va., will start test-marketing a cigarette with a charcoal filter and tobacco cured to reduce nitrosamine, a potent carcinogen. Thousands of chemicals.