Filter as Fraud – The Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society

“I grew up in the blacklands of Central Texas, where if you weren’t a wimp or a dweeb you knew how to Bogart that cigarette. I knew all the tricks. I could light a match with my teeth, my thumbnail, or my zipper. I could French inhale, I could hold a whole cigarette lit-end first inside my mouth, I could fling a butt 30 yards with one disdainful flick of the finger. I was cool. I was a dope. A decade or so later, I got so mad at myself for what smoking was doing to me I quit cold. Carried a pack around in my pocket for days, but every time I reached for it, the wave of revulsion that washed over me stopped me from lighting up. After three weeks I threw the pack away, and that was that. My only revenge is to hammer away at the evil varmints who put all that Marlboro Country nonsense in my dumb teenage brain in the first place.”

— Ed Stein

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Filters and harm

Despite being labelled the “deadliest fraud in the history of human civilisation”,1 filter tips now feature on almost every mass-produced cigarette smoked across the globe.2 After filters first appeared in the 1860s as an attempt to protect against tobacco flakes entering the mouth,3 the tobacco industry introduced modern cellulose acetate cigarette filters in the 1950s to alleviate public concerns about smoking-related lung cancer.4 Filters and innovations to filters have been consistently marketed as a means to reduce smoking-related health risks,5 with the very name ‘filter’ suggesting reduced harm.6 For instance, filter perforations introduced in the 1970s and 1980s to create ‘light’ and ‘mild’ cigarettes produced lower machine-tested yields of tar and nicotine. When smoking, however, the perforations are blocked by smokers’ fingers,7 8 serving to increase rather than decrease harm as smokers take more frequent and deeper puffs to satisfy nicotine cravings.9 The overwhelming majority of independent research shows that filters do not reduce the harms associated with smoking7–9—a fact understood by tobacco industry scientists in the 1960s.4 In fact, filters may increase the harms caused by smoking by enabling smokers to inhale smoke more deeply into their lungs.8 Furthermore, toxic fibres shed from the cut end of the filter are inhaled and ingested by smokers.3 A recent research letter reporting a study with contradictory findings10 has been criticised for a non-representative sample11 and failing to take into account confounding factors such as socioeconomic status.12

In addition, cigarette filters are an environmental hazard and are among the 10 most common plastics in the world’s oceans. Every year, an estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette filters are deposited into the environment. Discarded filters are commonly made of cellulose acetate, a plastic13 losing on average only 38% mass in two years of decomposition,14 and contain a number of toxic substances which may leach into the environment.15 16 In 2019, many single use plastics were banned in the EU. However, early proposals for Member States to reduce plastic waste from cigarettes by 50% by 2025 and 80% by 2030 were rejected in favour of weaker measures.17 Instead, tobacco companies must help raise public awareness of the plastic in their cigarette filters and contribute to the costs of clean-up, collection and waste treatment of disposed filters.18 Even these measures were resisted by the tobacco industry and its associates.19

Now tobacco companies are exploring the possibility of biodegradable filters. However, this should be regarded with caution. First, biodegradable filters would still leach harmful chemicals into the environment if discarded improperly16 and second, it is likely that the tobacco industry will use biodegradable filters as both a Corporate Social Responsibility and a marketing opportunity. The potential unintended consequences would be reputation rehabilitation and consumers and non-consumers alike believing that filtered cigarettes are less harmful without plastic in their filters. Given that we know that tobacco companies are already marketing their filter innovations to retailers in a way that connotates health benefits, biodegradable filters are likely to be no exception and the filter fraud will be enabled to adapt and persist once more.