Daily Doc: Lorillard, May 4, 1983: There's 40% Less Tobacco in a Modern Cigarette
Daily Doc: There's 40% Less Tobacco in a Modern Cigarette
Title: The History of Cigarettes. Changes of Smoke Chemistry of Modern Day Cigarettes.
Lorillard, May 4, 1983
Bates #: 89442789/2826
January 10, 2000
For the most part, this is a long and boring paper about the history of smoke chemistry. The interesting part, though, came at the end on page 34, where the author describes the physical differences between 1940s cigarettes and today's cigarettes.
ln 1940, a commercial cigarette contained 1300 milligrams (mg) of tobacco by weight, and by the 1980s it contained only 750 mg of tobacco. The author states,
"Thus, a cigarette of the 1980's would contain about 40% less tobacco... than its counterpart of 40 years ago."Apparently, early in the 1900s, cigarette makers used just the upper one-fourth of the tobacco leaf. Over the years, though, mechanical threshing created increased waste, and labor costs kept increasing. Eventually, the industry found ways to make use of parts of the tobacco plant that were never initially intended for use, like stems. They developed ways to incorporate stems by making fillers like reconstituted and "puffed" tobacco (puffed tobacco is treated with a gas to expand it). In the long run, these cost-saving measures, combined with the use of additives, have decreased the amount of actual tobacco in a cigarette by fully 40%.
CITATION
Title: The History of Cigarettes. Changes of Smoke Chemistry of Modern Day Cigarettes.
Type of Document: Speech, presentation (confidential)
Author Vello Norman, Lorillard Research Center, Greensboro, North Carolina Recipient: N/A
Date: 19830504
Site: Tobacco Documents Online http://www.tobaccodocuments.org/
Page Count 38
Bates No. 89442789-2826
URL: http://www.tobaccodocuments.org/view.cfm?docid=89442789/2826&source=SNAPLOR&ShowImages=yes
Litigation Usage: None yet
Search Criteria: Sorry, I can't remember!
QUOTES
Basically, there are two main processes by which reconstituted tobacco is made...the paper making process and the slurry process. No matter what the process, it per se imposes some differences on smoke chemistry. Some of the differences are reflected in major smoke constituents but there are probably just as many more serious ones at the ppm and ppb level of a multitude of flavor-important minor smoke ingredients....
...Of course, the main purpose of reconstitution is not to use the same blend...but to utilize portions of the leaf that otherwise do not lend themselves to use in cigarettes, and hence, substantial shifts in chemistry can occur....
...First of all, there are major shifts in CO, nicotine and phenols that are due to the process...
...Expanded tobacco made its appearance in commercial cigarettes in the early 1970s and it is by now a significant component of the majority of cigarettes sold...
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