The 'media' (and gov't)
perception was (and still is) that it was the
tobacco companies who created the idea of 'light/ultra-light' cigs - with the results of low tar and nicotine studies done at the FTC with smoking machines with 'light's cigs (ie holes punched in the filters), that one could reduce the tar and hence particles in the lungs that cause disease.
And then when people either smoked more or covered the holes, and tobacco companies were advertising that cigs were safer - which the FTC 'proved' - the gov't came down on them for lying and removed the 'light/ultra-light' tags and the advertising claims.
The actual story goes back further - part of which was, in the 50's, adding filters to unfiltered cigarettes, then the various 'mods' on those - fiber, charcoal, etc. Then in the 60's the FTC did the cigarette machine study and found that by poking holes in the filters that they could reduce the tar (and nicotine). And this is where it gets a bit skewed. There were "recommendations" by the "public health authorities" for the tobacco companies to produce low tar cigarettes. And one could read "recommendations" as 'offering BT a deal they couldn't refuse'. IOW, do what's recommended or we'll enforce it by law. And this is not included in any references by public health and the 3 and 4 letter agencies who are attacking ecigs now - see wiki on 'light cigarettes' and:
http://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/brp/tcrb/monographs/13/m13_1.pdf
"Faced with the continuing exposure of large numbers of
smokers to the cancer-causing substances in tobacco smoke,
public health
authorities made the valid conclusion that cigarettes that delivered less tar
to smokers would be likely to produce less cancer as well (
U.S. Congress,
1967), and the effort to produce and market low-tar cigarettes began to
gather momentum.
The recommendations by public health authorities to produce low-tar
cigarettes failed to appreciate two important realities. First, smokers were
powerfully addicted to the nicotine in cigarettes. They actively changed the
way they smoked individual cigarettes (see Chapters 2 and 3)—and some
smokers increased the number of cigarettes they smoked per day (see
Chapter 4)—in order to preserve their moment-to-moment and daily intake
of nicotine. Because cigarettes deliver smoke with a relatively fixed ratio of
tar to nicotine, smokers also preserved their dose of tar when they preserved
their dose of nicotine."
"
Second, public health authorities dramatically underestimated the ability
of cigarette manufacturers to engineer cigarettes that would yield very
low tar and nicotine values when machine smoked, but yielded much higher
levels of tar and nicotine when smoked by the smoker."
"
With the endorsement of lower tar cigarettes by public health authorities
in the 1960s (U.S. Congress, 1967), cigarette marketing began to focus
on machine-measured tar deliveries. Tobacco industry research and engineering
efforts recognized that at least two directions were possible with the
development of either a health-image (health reassurance) cigarette or a cigarette
with minimal biological activity (one that would actually produce
less disease) (Green, 1968)."
Again, one has to 'read between the lines' with 'endorsements and recommendations' from public health. But basically, it was 'recommended' by pubic health that the tobacco companies develop light cigarettes and when they did and people smoking them smoked more, then public health came down on the tobacco companies for lying and false advertising and banned the tags of lights and ultralights. Once again - gov't in essence, created the situation with the FTC studies and endorsements and recommendations of lights, then made the tobacco companies out to be the bad guys only looking for profit with no regard for the health of their customers.
Bringing back the connection to ecigs - here we have this:
"The recommendations by public health authorities to produce low-tar
cigarettes failed to appreciate two important realities."
I can imagine, some 'genius' public health expert writing a similar 'after the fact of deeming' passage regarding ecigarettes after say, 5 years or so - where public health authorities failed to appreciate realities - either by the rising number of teen smoking, more cancer deaths from people returning to smoking or not having a safer alternative (with a nod to Carol :- ) but that's what
they'll say ) and the enormous black market in ecigarettes, tainted products, smuggling at the borders, drive-bys, etc. etc.
And yeah..... I know some of the history of this from earlier efforts on smoker's rights before ecigs :- )
