TAR AND NICOTINE CONTENT OF CIGARETTE-SMOKE IN RELATION TO DEATH RATES

Over 1,000,000 men and women who enrolled in an epidemiological study in 1959-1960 were (with few exceptions) traced for 12 yr. They all answered questionnaires on cigarette smoking and various other factors at time of enrollment; survivors answered repeat questionnaires on 3 later occasions. In this analysis, cigarette smokers were classified by the amount of tar and nicotine delivered by the brand they usually smoked at the start of each of two 6 yr periods. Among subjects who smoked the same number of cigarettes a day, total death rates, death rates from coronary heart disease and death rates from lung cancer were somewhat lower for those smoked low tar-nicotine cigarettes than for those who smoked high tar-nicotine cigarettes. The death rates of subjects who smoked low tar-nicotine cigarettes were far higher than the death of subjects who never smoked regularly.