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Cancer Control Research

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) Analyzing tobacco documents on ciqarette desiqn. Tobacco documents will be searched, retrieved and analyzed for information on four focused topics related to cigarette design. First, we will focus on cigarette length, circumference, and puff number. Since the 1960s there has been a dramatic increase in the length of cigarettes (about 60% of the market are king size and about 40% are 100mm). Increases in cigarette length are related to increased burn times and puff counts and sometimes related to decreased circumferences. Length may also be related to promoting elasticity in a cigarette. Second, published work on filter ventilation, which made use of industry documents, will be updated in light of new documents posted since November 2000 and other documents not located in prior searches. A current collection of about 250 documents--used in published work--will be abstracted and posted on the Internet as a collection, along with selected additional documents as identified. Third, a historical analysis on as many brands as possible will be performed on the relationship between standard yields, filter ventilation and puff number. Fourth, the Barclay affair will be analyzed. Barclay was a cigarette introduced by BATCO/Brown& Williamson in the early 1980s in the United States. Barclay led to unprecedented complaints by other tobacco companies that the filter design was subject to unavoidable vent blocking by smokers and to a Federal Appeals Court ruling that excluded Barclay from Federal Trade Commission Testing. Barclay and related brands using the so-called Actron filter still receive special treatment in FTC tests. Behind-the-scenes industry research will be discussed, as well as the public information on the topic. For all topics, current policy implications will be addressed. These issues relate to smoker compensation and the testing of cigarettes. An understanding of these documents can help guide future research and policy on cigarette smoking as well as cigarette design and testing. Collections (with standardized abstracts controlled vocabulary terms) will be made available on the Internet. Reports will be submitted to peer-reviewed journals.