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A recent research revealed that cigarette makers changed the composition of their cigarettes many times without warning consumers. This week President Obama legally signed a bill providing the US Food and Drug Administration with the power to regulate tobacco products. At the same time according to a research completed by Harvard School of Public Health scientists demonstrates that cigarette makers have modified the composition of the cigarettes several times, even despite such modifications have surpassed permissible variance requirements.

Scientists state that the outcome lays in the fact that smokers who were purchasing the same cigarette brand were not notified about the modification made to their preferred products and the impact of those modifications on the rate of harm to smokers’ health or their addiction.

Anna Kissinger, the member of the research team and associate professor at HSPH says she was delighted to get to know that the FDA will demand from tobacco companies to reveal the composition of their products and inform of any alterations applied to their cigarettes, in order that everybody become aware that tobacco industry attempted to make people even more addicted by changing the ingredients.

The latter research can be found at the official website of the Tobacco Control Journal and would be published in the latest issue in July.

During the research, members of HSPH research team examined the documentation made public by cigarette companies after signature of the Master Settlement Agreement in 1998. That documentation revealed essential alterations continuously applied to the products from to time, among which were mixing, adding new flavors and ingredients and external design modifications. For instance, cigarette companies invented new techniques to process tobacco, modifying the smoke composition, and the rates of processed tobaccos were continually altered.

Although cigarette makers made continuous modifications to their products that often have surpassed the rates of permissible variance defined by the industry, they have not warned smokers about those modifications.

The latest research is based on previous studies completed by the HSPH on the changes in tobacco products that are made in order to intensify addiction and attraction. During the last-years consideration of the FDA bill on the Senate floor, HSPH chairman John Connolly revealed the study results to the senators stating that cigarette manufacturers altered the amount of nicotine and added flavorings including chocolate and cherry to attract minors to smoking.