Product Design

The cigarette is a uniquely successful drug delivery device. It provides an effective vehicle (inhaled smoke) for nicotine to travel deep into the lungs, resulting in the most rapid and efficient possible route to the brain (approximately eight seconds). It enables the smoker to manipulate smoke delivery—and therefore nicotine dose—easily with each successive puff, constantly adjusting delivery to individual needs and circumstances. And it facilitates a host of secondary behaviors and cues tied psychologically to smoking "satisfaction," including physical and oral manipulation of the cigarette, smoke aroma and taste, and sensory impact (bite) at the back of the throat and mouth preceding the delivery of nicotine to the brain.

The design of the cigarette appears uncomplicated at first glance: Tobacco is rolled in paper, then burned at one end and inhaled at the other. However, research by tobacco manufacturers, particularly since the mid-twentieth century, has resulted in a highly engineered product drawing on an increasingly sophisticated understanding of product design factors (such as filter, paper, ventilation, and additives) and their effects. Manufacturers have developed technologies to alter smoke delivery including the form and availability of nicotine, to adjust smoke sensory cues such as impact, and to facilitate smoker manipulation of delivery. Design factors can also alter delivery of specific smoke constituents, including nicotine analogues and other components affecting addiction, and may increase or reduce smoke toxicity and subsequent health risk.

The Early Cigarette

Today's cigarette may be a highly engineered product, but its roots are more humble. Records from the sixteenth century indicate that Mexicans smoked tubes of reed or cane packed with the aromatic balsam of liquidambar (a deciduous tree growing in Central America) incense and tobacco. Spanish colonists introduced the product to Europe when they brought back small cylinders of tobacco wrapped in covers of vegetable matter or leaves. By the seventeenth century, the vegetable wrapping had been replaced by fine paper, creating so-called "papalettes." In Spain and other countries of southern and eastern Europe, a market developed among the affluent classes for these paper cigarettes, hand-rolled by girls or women with expensive tobaccos from Turkey or Egypt, known as Oriental leaf. The habit spread further during the Crimean War (1853–1856) when British soldiers were introduced to cigarettes by their Turkish allies and Russian enemies. The first known British cigarette manufacturer dates from this period, when Robert Gloag manufactured cigarettes in London, using Russian tobacco, yellow tissue paper, and a cane mouthpiece. The handmade cigarettes of the time came in different shapes and sizes; in Austria, so-called double cigarettes were three times as long as modern cigarettes and came with a mouthpiece at each end. They were designed to be cut in two before smoking.

Cigarette manufacturers also began to cater to the emerging female market in the late nineteenth century by producing small, dainty cigarettes for upper-class society women. These were often scented and flavored and some had gold or colored tips. Although there are many social and financial reasons why more women began to smoke from the late nineteenth century onward, the fact that cigarettes were milder, easier to smoke, and smelled less offensive than pipes and cigars undoubtedly contributed to the trend.

However, there was a good deal of prejudice extended to the cigarette among male smokers as the quality of cigarettes was perceived as inferior to that of cigars and pipe tobaccos, while their size and name—the diminutive "ette" on the end—led to charges of effeminacy. In London, cigarettes were commonly associated with the immigrant population and evidence suggests that the workers making cigarettes were predominantly foreign.

In the United States, cigarettes were practically unknown until the mid- to late nineteenth century, and were again predominantly associated with immigrants. Antismoking literature warned of "cigar-butt grubbers" in New York, boys and girls who scoured the streets for stumps of discarded cigars, which they dried and sold to be used for making cigarettes (Lander 1886). However, most cigarettes were produced legitimately by the immigrant population and were taxed by the government from 1864 onward. As in Europe, these were hand-rolled with expensive Oriental tobaccos and sold to affluent city dwellers.

There was also a market for hand-rolling tobacco, which the smoker rolled into cigarettes, a cheaper option. The tobacco used for this in the United States was predominantly the domestically produced Bright tobacco, a Virginian leaf dried by indirect heat from flues run through storage barns. This process resulted in a golden-colored tobacco that produced a mellower smoke and was easier to inhale. The nicotine was therefore absorbed more readily into the body than with traditional pipe or cigar tobacco and was more likely to lead to addiction.

Mechanization

The standard product one associates with cigarette smoking in the 2000s came about with the introduction of mechanized production. While several people developed machines to make cigarettes in the late nineteenth century, the most well known and successful was the Bonsack machine. This was designed and patented by James Bonsack in the early 1880s and exhibited at the Paris exhibition of 1883. This machine could produce cigarettes at the rate of 300 per minute, reducing the costs of production and making it possible to supply an emerging mass market with a standardized product. The rights to the machine were bought by an English firm, W.D. & H.O. Wills, in 1883 and by James Buchanan Duke of the American Tobacco Company in 1884. Despite some initial mechanical problems, it proved a worthwhile investment for both firms as it brought cigarettes within the price range of the lower classes and vastly expanded the potential market for cigarettes. U.S. firms further changed cigarette production by introducing Virginia tobacco into ready-made cigarettes, creating an affordable and convenient factory-made cigarette. This tobacco could be blended or used alone, and its porous nature meant that it was particularly suitable for additives and flavorings.

As cigarettes gained in popularity, the number of brands proliferated and manufacturers looked for new ways to distinguish their brands from the rest. Key selling points by the interwar period included the mildness and purity of the smoke, achieved through quality blends. Mildness was an important quality because of concerns about "smoker's throat" and the irritation caused by inhaling tobacco smoke. The effects of nicotine were also a consideration; in the 1920s, "denicotinized" tobacco and cigarettes were available in Britain and the United States, but historians do not know how popular they were. Innovations in product design included cork-tips, longer cigarettes, and the addition of menthol. Cork-tips, unlike the later introduction of filters, served an aesthetic rather than a health purpose, keeping loose strands of tobacco off the lips. They also maintained cigarette length while avoiding the waste of tobacco leaf in the unsmoked cigarette end. Some manufacturers, for example, De Reske in England, made cigarettes with colored tips for women to conceal lipstick stains. Advertising sometimes made a virtue out of a process common to all manufactured cigarettes—Lucky Strike cigarettes were sold with the slogan "It's toasted." Applying heat during the drying and sterilizing process was common to all leaf tobacco production, but the idea of toasting suggested a warm and appetizing, as well as flavorsome, product.

By the 1940s and 1950s, manufacturers were concerned to salvage the tobacco stem and dust that went to waste during the production of cigarettes. They developed reconstituted tobacco sheet (RTS) by grinding the tobacco waste to a pulp and then pressing it. The RTS was then shredded and blended with tobacco leaf, allowing financial savings, and additives were used to improve the taste. The blending process and the addition of additives also allowed tobacco companies to control how fast cigarettes burned, how easy smoke was to inhale, and nicotine and tar levels. This is controversial as some additives, particularly ammonia, may increase the speed with which the cigarette delivers nicotine to the brain.

From the 1960s onward, following publication of major reports on smoking and health in Britain and the United States, health concerns became a key factor in cigarette production. In the decades that followed, concerns about health led to the increasing popularity of filtered, lowtar, low-nicotine cigarettes and to the development of the highly engineered products called cigarettes in the twenty-first century.

The Modern Cigarette

The modern cigarette can be broken into four major components: the tobacco column, filter, paper, and ventilation. Each of these components may be modified with direct effects on smoke delivery. Likewise, they may be used to control sensory perception, to reduce the degree of effort required by the smoker to obtain a given amount of smoke, or to control other important product factors such as feel, taste, and aroma. The manufacturer utilizes computer-based design models as well as chemical and physical analyses to control all aspects of the finished product.

The primary component of a cigarette is tobacco. Burning tobacco generates nicotine and other smoke constituents, which are then inhaled by the smoker and absorbed into the body. Different tobaccos have unique physical and chemical characteristics, such as burn rate, tar, and nicotine delivery, flavor, and aroma. Thus, the choice and blending of tobaccos is critical to the final product. Tobacco used to manufacture cigarettes traditionally differs by region. Flue-cured tobaccos predominate in the United Kingdom, Finland, Canada, Japan, China, and Australia; air-cured tobaccos are preferred in France, parts of Germany and Italy, and South America; and sun-cured (Oriental) tobaccos are used in Turkey and Greece. In the United States and parts of Western Europe, a blend of these different tobaccos in combination with reconstituted and expanded tobaccos is typical, incorporating the different characteristics of each. Since the 1980s the U.S. blended cigarette has become widespread internationally.

Processed tobaccos (that is, reconstituted and expanded tobaccos) may constitute as much as one-third of the total tobacco used in a modern cigarette. This is due in part to their reduced cost, as well as their ability to impart unique qualities to the finished product. For example, reconstituted tobaccos are generally processed with additives, often at high temperatures that induce further chemical changes. This process may increase the amount of nicotine available in freebase form, and alter smoke impact and sensory perception. Expanded tobaccos, developed in the late 1980s to reduce nicotine levels, have a high filling power (less tobacco is needed to fill the cigarette) and increase the speed at which the cigarette burns between puffs. Additives may be used to introduce new smoke constituents such as nicotine analogs, smoke smoothing agents, or bronchodilators (agents which facilitate inhalation).

The majority of cigarettes today, including 98 percent of cigarettes sold in the United States, use filters that may reduce delivery of some smoke constituents to the smoker. Different filters are common in different cigarette markets. The cellulose acetate filter typical of U.S. style cigarettes are most effective at reducing smoke particles ("tar"), while charcoal filters common elsewhere (Japan) are intended to filter out gases present in cigarette smoke. The effects of filter differences on overall health risk are not easily measurable, but in all cases the "filtered" smoke remains toxic.

Ventilation holes (small holes in the paper cigarette wrapping around the filter) are commonly introduced in filtered cigarettes, diluting smoke with air by as much as 95 percent. Filter ventilation is the most critical design component in the development of lower delivery cigarettes ("lights" and "ultralights"). However, it is commonly accepted that a smoker will simply inhale more deeply in order to compensate for this reduction in delivery. In addition, since ventilation holes are often invisible, they may be unconsciously blocked by a smoker's lips or fingers, reducing dilution and leading to increased smoke delivery. At higher ventilation levels, it becomes extremely difficult for the smoker to draw smoke from the cigarette, leading to consumer unacceptability.

Cigarette paper porosity is likewise an important factor in overall smoke delivery. A more porous paper allows air to be drawn into the tobacco column with each puff, reducing the amount of smoke generated. The porosity may be increased by adding tiny holes to the paper either electrostatically or mechanically. Cigarette paper is also generally coated with additives that are used to control the rate at which the tobacco burns. Most cigarette papers contain between 20 percent and 30 percent chalk, in order to cause the formation of an attractive white ash.

In combination with these major design components, physical parameters such as length, circumference, density, and the coarseness (cut) of the tobacco are used to fine-tune smoke delivery. The manufacturer adjusts the character of the smoke (including smoothness, body, impact, irritation, and flavor), reducing undesirable components and increasing those (such as nicotine) with "desirable" effects. The number of puffs per cigarette, the burn rate, and the delivery per puff are all carefully monitored.

The modern cigarette has reduced irritation to allow deeper inhalation; provides enough sensation in the throat to "cue" the smoker regarding delivery; and facilitates the absorption of nicotine through increased freebasing of nicotine and other chemical changes. Particular care is given by manufacturers to how the product affects puffing behaviors, in order to allow the smoker increased control over the cigarette dose, and maximizing the delivery produced from a minimum of effort.

See Also Additives; Cigarettes; Fire Safety; Genetic Modification; "Light" and Filtered Cigarettes; Marketing; Menthol Cigarettes; "Safer" Cigarettes; United States Agriculture.

? ROSEMARY ELLIOT
? GEOFFREY FERRIS WAYNE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alford, B.W.E. W.D. & H.O. Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry 1786–1965. London: Methuen, 1973.

Arents, George. Tobacco: Its History Illustrated by the Books, Manuscripts and Engravings in the Library of George Arents, Jr. Together with an Introductory Essay and Bibliographic Notes by Jerome E. Brooks. New York: The Rosenbach Company, 1937.

British American Tobacco. "Cigarette Design." Bates: 400132742-400132776. Available: <http://tobaccodocuments.org/product_design/3194.html>.

Browne, C. L. The Design of Cigarettes, 3d ed. Charlotte, N.C.: Filter Products Division, Hoechst Celanese Corporation, 1990.

Lander, Meta. The Tobacco Problem. Boston: Cupples, Upham & Co., 1886.

National Cancer Institute. Risks Associated with Smoking Cigarettes with Low Tar Machine-Measured Yields of Tar and Nicotine. NIH Publication No. 02-5074. Bethesda, Md.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, 2001. Available: <http://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/tcrb/monographs/13/index.html>.

menthol a form of alcohol imparting a minty flavor to some cigarettes.

tar a residue of tobacco smoke, composed of many chemical substances that are collectively known by this term.

flue-cured tobacco also called Bright Leaf, a variety of leaf tobacco dried (or cured) in air-tight barns using artificial heat. Heat is distributed through a network of pipes, or flues, near the barn floor.

air-cured tobacco leaf tobacco that has been dried naturally without artificial heat.