Cigarette

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A filtered cigarette
An electronic cigarette

A cigarette is a narrow cylinder containing a combustible material, typically tobacco, that is rolled into thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end, causing it to smolder; the resulting smoke is orally inhaled via the opposite end. Cigarette smoking is the most common method of tobacco consumption. The term cigarette, as commonly used, refers to a tobacco cigarette, but the word is sometimes used to refer to other substances, such as a cannabis cigarette or an herbal cigarette. A cigarette is distinguished from a cigar by its usually smaller size, use of processed leaf, and paper wrapping, which is typically white.

There are significant negative health effects from smoking cigarettes such as

purchasing age
of tobacco, and levied taxes to discourage cigarette use.

In the 21st century, a product called an

some health risks associated with their use
. Since e-cigarettes are a relatively new product, scientists do not possess data on their possible long-term health effects.

History

Global

A reproduction of a carving from the temple at Palenque, Mexico, depicting a Maya deity using a smoking tube

The earliest forms of cigarettes were similar to their predecessor, the

Aztecs, smoked tobacco and other psychoactive drugs in religious rituals and frequently depicted priests and deities smoking on pottery and temple engravings. The cigarette and the cigar were the most common methods of smoking in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America until recent times.[1]

The North American, Central American, and South American cigarette used various plant wrappers; when it was brought back to Spain, maize wrappers were introduced, and by the 17th century, fine paper. The resulting product was called papelate and is documented in Goya's paintings La Cometa, La Merienda en el Manzanares, and El juego de la pelota a pala (18th century).[2]

By 1830, the cigarette had crossed into France, where it received the name cigarette; and in 1845, the French state tobacco monopoly began manufacturing them.[2] The French word made its way into English in the 1840s.[3] Some American reformers promoted the spelling cigaret,[4][5] but this was never widespread and is now largely abandoned.[6] Cigarettes are sometimes also called a fag in British slang.[7]

The first patented cigarette-making machine was invented by Juan Nepomuceno Adorno of Mexico in 1847.[8] In the 1850s, Turkish cigarette leaves had become popular.[9] However, production climbed markedly when another cigarette-making machine was developed in the 1880s by James Albert Bonsack, which vastly increased the productivity of cigarette companies, which went from making about 40,000 hand-rolled cigarettes daily to around 4 million.[10] At the time, these imported cigarettes from America had significant sales among British smokers.[9]

In the English-speaking world, the use of tobacco in cigarette form became increasingly widespread during and after the Crimean War, when British soldiers began emulating their Ottoman Turkish comrades and Russian enemies, who had begun rolling and smoking tobacco in strips of old newspaper for lack of proper cigar-rolling leaf.[2] This was helped by the development of tobaccos suitable for cigarette use, and by the development of the Egyptian cigarette export industry.

Francisco Goya's La Cometa, depicting a (foreground left) man smoking an early quasicigarette

Cigarettes may have been initially used in a manner similar to pipes, cigars, and cigarillos and not inhaled.[citation needed] As cigarette tobacco became milder and more acidic, inhaling may have become perceived as more agreeable;[citation needed] a sentiment supported by advertising in the 1930s.[11] However, Helmuth von Moltke noticed in the 1830s that Ottomans (and he himself) inhaled the Turkish tobacco and Latakia from their pipes[12] (which are both initially sun-cured, acidic leaf varieties).

A 1942 ad encourages women to smoke Camel brand cigarettes.

The widespread smoking of cigarettes in the Western world is largely a 20th-century phenomenon. By the late 19th century cigarettes were known as coffin nails[13] but the link between lung cancer and smoking was not established until the 20th century.[14] German doctors were the first to make the link, and it led to the first antitobacco movement in Nazi Germany.[15][16][17]

Cigarette brands, including Craven "A", advertised in Shaftesbury Avenue, London in 1949

During World War I and World War II, cigarettes were rationed to soldiers. During the Vietnam War, cigarettes were included with C-ration meals. In 1975, the U.S. government stopped putting cigarettes in military rations. During the second half of the 20th century, the adverse health effects of tobacco smoking started to become widely known and printed health warnings became common on cigarette packets.

Graphical cigarette warning labels are a more effective method to communicate to the public the dangers of cigarette smoking.[18] Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru,[19] Greece, the Netherlands,[20] New Zealand, Norway, Hungary, the United Kingdom, France, Romania, Singapore, Egypt, Jordan, Nepal and Turkey all have both textual warnings and graphic visual images displaying, among other things, the damaging effects tobacco use has on the human body. The United States has implemented textual but not graphical warnings.

The cigarette has evolved much since its conception; for example, the thin bands that travel transverse to the "axis of smoking" (thus forming circles along the length of the cigarette) are alternate sections of thin and thick paper to facilitate effective burning when being drawn, and retard burning when at rest. Synthetic particulate filters may remove some of the tar before it reaches the smoker.

The "holy grail" for cigarette companies has been a cancer-free cigarette. On record, the closest historical attempt was produced by scientist James Mold. Under the name project TAME, he produced the XA cigarette. However, in 1978, his project was terminated.[21][22][23]

Since 1950, the average nicotine and tar content of cigarettes has steadily fallen. Research has shown that the fall in overall nicotine content has led to smokers inhaling larger volumes per puff.[24]

United States

One entrepreneur who was quick to spot the advantages of machine-made cigarettes was James Buchanan Duke. Previously a producer of smoking tobacco only, his firm, W. Duke & Sons & Co., entered the cigarette industry in the early 1880s. After installing two Bonsack machines, Duke spent heavily on advertising and sales promotion with the result that by 1889 his was the largest cigarette manufacturer in the country. The new Bonsack machines were of decisive importance in rapid, cheap manufacture of all tobacco products but one. Cigars needed slow, laborious hand rolling and were produced in hundreds of small workshops, especially in New York City. In 1890 Duke and the other four major cigarette companies combined to form the American Tobacco Company, a firm that dominated the market and used aggressive tactics on hundreds of small competitors until they sold out. It was called the "Tobacco Trust." The trust soon expanded its operations to include cigars, smoking, chewing tobacco and snuff. Among the companies drawn into this organization were plug manufacturers,

Liggett & Myers and R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which at the time produced twist and flat plug, and P. Lorillard, an old-line manufacturer of snuff. By 1910 the trust produced 86% of all cigarettes produced in the United States, and 75% to 95% of other forms, but only 14% of the cigars.[25]

At the start of the 20th century, the per capita annual consumption in the U.S. was 54 cigarettes (with fewer than 0.5% of the population smoking more than 100 cigarettes per year), and consumption there peaked at 4,259 per capita in 1965. At that time, about 50% of men and 33% of women smoked (defined as smoking more than 100 cigarettes per year).[26] By 2000, consumption had fallen to 2,092 per capita, corresponding to about 30% of men and 22% of women smoking more than 100 cigarettes per year, and by 2006 per capita consumption had declined to 1,691;[27] implying that about 21% of the population smoked 100 cigarettes or more per year.

Construction

Diagram of a cigarette
  1. Mainstream smoke
  2. Filtration material
  3. Adhesives
  4. Ventilation holes
  5. Ink
  6. Adhesive
  7. Sidestream smoke
  8. Filter
  9. Tipping Paper
  10. Tobacco and ingredients
  11. Paper
  12. Burning point and ashes

Manufacturers have described the cigarette as "a drug administration system for the delivery of nicotine in acceptable and attractive form".[28][29][30][31] Modern commercially manufactured cigarettes are seemingly simple objects consisting mainly of a tobacco blend, paper, PVA glue to bond the outer layer of paper together, and often also a cellulose acetate–based filter.[32] While the assembly of cigarettes is straightforward, much focus is given to the creation of each of the components, in particular the tobacco blend. A key ingredient that makes cigarettes more addictive is the inclusion of reconstituted tobacco, which has additives to make nicotine more volatile as the cigarette burns.[33]

Paper

The paper for holding the tobacco blend may vary in porosity to allow ventilation of the burning ember or contain materials that control the burning rate of the cigarette and stability of the produced ash. The papers used in tipping the cigarette (forming the mouthpiece) and surrounding the filter stabilize the mouthpiece from saliva and moderate the burning of the cigarette, as well as the delivery of smoke with the presence of one or two rows of small laser-drilled air holes.[34]

Tobacco blend

Leones Africanos brand cigarettes from the mid-20th century, part of the permanent collection of the Museo del Objeto del Objeto

The process of blending gives the end product a consistent taste from batches of tobacco grown in different areas of a country that may change in flavor profile from year to year due to different environmental conditions.[35]

Modern cigarettes produced after the 1950s, although composed mainly of shredded tobacco leaf, use a significant quantity of tobacco processing byproducts in the blend. Each cigarette's tobacco blend is made mainly from the leaves of flue-cured brightleaf, burley tobacco, and oriental tobacco. These leaves are selected, processed, and aged prior to blending and filling. The processing of brightleaf and burley tobaccos for tobacco leaf "strips" produces several byproducts such as leaf stems, tobacco dust, and tobacco leaf pieces ("small laminate").[35] To improve the economics of producing cigarettes, these byproducts are processed separately into forms where they can then be added back into the cigarette blend without an apparent or marked change in the cigarette's quality. The most common tobacco byproducts include:

  • Blended leaf (BL) sheet: a thin, dry sheet cast from a paste made with tobacco dust collected from tobacco stemming, finely milled burley-leaf stem, and pectin.[36]
  • Reconstituted leaf (RL) sheet: a paper-like material made from recycled tobacco fines, tobacco stems and "class tobacco", which consists of tobacco particles less than 30 mesh in size (about 0.6 mm) that are collected at any stage of tobacco processing:[37] RL is made by extracting the soluble chemicals in the tobacco byproducts, processing the leftover tobacco fibers from the extraction into a paper, and then reapplying the extracted materials in concentrated form onto the paper in a fashion similar to what is done in paper sizing. At this stage, ammonium additives are applied to make reconstituted tobacco an effective nicotine delivery system.[33]
  • Expanded (ES) or improved stem (IS): ES is rolled, flattened, and shredded leaf stems that are expanded by being soaked in water and rapidly heated. Improved stem follows the same process, but is simply steamed after shredding. Both products are then dried. These products look similar in appearance, but are different in taste.[35]

According to data from the World Health Organization,[38] the amount of tobacco per 1000 cigarettes fell from 1.03 kg (2.28 pounds) in 1960 to 0.41 kg (0.91 pounds) in 1999, largely as a result of reconstituting tobacco, fluffing, and additives.

A recipe-specified combination of brightleaf, burley-leaf, and oriental-leaf tobacco is mixed with various additives to improve its flavors. Most commercially available cigarettes today contain tobacco that is treated with sugar to counter the harshness of the smoke.

Additives

Various additives are combined into the shredded tobacco product mixtures, with humectants such as propylene glycol or glycerol, as well as flavoring products and enhancers such as cocoa solids, licorice, tobacco extracts, and various sugars, which are known collectively as "casings". The leaf tobacco is then shredded, along with a specified amount of small laminate, expanded tobacco, BL, RL, ES, and IS. A perfume-like flavor/fragrance, called the "topping" or "toppings", which is most often formulated by flavor companies, is then blended into the tobacco mixture to improve the consistency in flavor and taste of the cigarettes associated with a certain brand name.[35] Additionally, they replace lost flavors due to the repeated wetting and drying used in processing the tobacco. Finally, the tobacco mixture is filled into cigarette tubes and packaged.

A list of 599 cigarette additives, created by five major American cigarette companies, was approved by the Department of Health and Human Services in April 1994. None of these additives is listed as an ingredient on the cigarette pack(s). Chemicals are added for organoleptic purposes and many boost the addictive properties of cigarettes, especially when burned.[citation needed]

One of the classes of chemicals on the list, ammonia salts, convert bound nicotine molecules in tobacco smoke into free nicotine molecules. This process, known as freebasing, could potentially increase the effect of nicotine on the smoker, but experimental data suggests that absorption is, in practice, unaffected.[39]

Cigarette tube

Cigarette tubes are prerolled cigarette paper usually with an acetate or paper filter at the end. They have an appearance similar to a finished cigarette, but are without any tobacco or smoking material inside. The length varies from Regular (70 mm) to King Size (84 mm) as well as 100s (100 mm) and 120s (120 mm).[40][self-published source?]

Filling a cigarette tube is usually done with a cigarette injector (also known as a shooter). Cone-shaped cigarette tubes, known as cones, can be filled using a packing stick or straw because of their shape. Cone smoking is popular because as the cigarette burns, it tends to get stronger and stronger. A cone allows more tobacco to be burned at the beginning than the end, allowing for an even flavor[41]

The United States Tobacco Taxation Bureau defines a cigarette tube as "Cigarette paper made into a hollow cylinder for use in making cigarettes."[42]

Cigarette filter