At the risk of fully transforming this weblog into an unequivocal anti-smoking campaign, which, to be sure, I’m not consciously trying to do in the least, I found this story from NPR a few days ago interesting.

There were no cigarette executives on hand to deny that smoking is harmful, as in the famous Congressional tobacco hearings of the 1990s; the star of this Senate Commerce Committee hearing was  the Federal Trade Commission’s smoking robot…The machine has been used since the 1960s when tobacco companies started making ‘light’ and ‘mild’ brands in response to growing health concerns, but Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic testified that for some time, the agency has known the robot doesn’t accurately reflect what people inhale when they puff on a cigarette.
…
Cathy Backinger with the National Cancer Institute testified that tobacco company documents show cigarette makers have long known that smokers get just as much if not more tar and nicotine from ‘light’ brands, but still use the FTC ratings to market their products…’Smokers erroneously saw these products as viable alternatives to quitting, and as a result, many more smokers continue to smoke who might otherwise have quit.’
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Yesterday, [New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg] said Congress has another urgent tobacco issue to tackle with the FTC smoking machine. ‘The FTC should not allow this rating system to continue if it cannot stand behind it, and big tobacco should not be able to hide behind the FTC method to justify the claim that ‘light’ and ‘low-tar’ cigarettes are healthier.”

But cigarette makers say they don’t market ‘light’ brands as any safer than regular full-flavored cigarettes. Bill Phelps is a spokesman for Philip Morris USA: ‘Smokers should not assume that brand descriptors such as ‘light’ or ‘ultralight’ indicate the actual amount of tar and nicotine that’s inhaled from a particular cigarette.”

Right. Wait, what? What exactly does the “light” refer to then, Bill? Actual weight of the cigarette? More brilliant white paper?

Maybe I’m just going out on a limb here, but when I buy light mayonnaise, I usually expect there to be less fat in it. Same thing with dressings, peanut butter—pretty much everything. When I drink light beer, typically there are less calories. When I buy jambalaya that is advertised to have “lower sodium,” I expect—not always, but usually—there to be less sodium in it. Maybe your industry works differently or uses a different English dialect or something. Where I’m from though, which happens to be exactly where you’re from, “light” is used to assuage peoples’ health concerns and usually refers to a product that has “less bad shit.” You do know that tar and nicotine are bad for you, right?

I’m getting tired of this crap. It’s getting really old. On the bright side, as Leo reminds me, I won’t be out of a job anytime soon thanks to these people.

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By the way, NPR’s new media player is fantastic—probably the best web-based media player there is. Even if you don’t listen to this story, I still implore you to go to their site and check out whatever suits your fancy. You can aggregate any story you want into a fully customizable playlist, which totally rocks my socks off.