BobHarris.com - Cigarette companies apparently cranking up the nicotine

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Cigarette companies apparently cranking up the nicotine

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Friday, 01 September 2006

Here's a way to enhance customer loyalty: make your product potentially more physically addictive -- from the Washington Post:

The amount of nicotine in most cigarettes rose an average of almost 10 percent from 1998 to 2004, with brands most popular with young people and minorities registering the biggest increases and highest nicotine content, according to a new study.

Is this just an quirk, an accident? Um... probably not, according to a federal judge, who apparently spent just a little time on the issue:

[I]n a 1,653-page opinion released two weeks ago in a landmark suit against the major tobacco companies by the federal government and several anti-smoking organizations, the judge found that cigarette makers adjusted nicotine levels with great care.

"Brands most popular with young people and minorities registering the biggest increases."

Nice.

Update: this Slate piece (found via boingboing) disputes the above, possibly persuasively. Your call.