Major Cigarette Maker

Now Lists Ingredients

 Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor

(Healingtalks) An American tobacco company now, for the first time,  lists some long-secret ingredients in its cigarettes and directly on the label.

Which Company/Brand of Cigarettes?

Liggett Group  provided a list of its L&M cigarette brand ingredients, to be put on the cigarette packs.

What Tobacco Ingredients?

The 26-item L&M list includes blended tobacco and water, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, natural and artificial licorice flavor, menthol, artificial milk chocolate and natural chocolate flavor, valerian root extract, molasses and vanilla extracts, and cedarwood oil. molasses, phenylacetic acid and the oil of the East Indian mint called patchouli. Less familiar additives include glycerol, propylene glycol, isovaleric acid, hexanoic acid and 3-methylpentanoic acid.

Why L&M lists Its Cigarette Ingredients

The move comes as the state of Massachusetts is trying to compel disclosure of all tobacco ingredients by all cigarette makers, an effort other major tobacco companies are fighting fiercely.

Liggett, which broke with the industry by signing the first settlements with states, supports the Massachusetts effort as well. “Liggett believes that its adult consumers have a right to full disclosure,” Liggett head Bennett S. LeBow said in a statement.  Activists have long pushed for disclosure of the ingredients, in part because consumers tend to be more wary of risks imposed upon them by others than of the risks they knowingly choose.

Exhaustive Public List of Ingredients?

Though at least 600 ingredients are used in American cigarettes (a composite list of 599 additives was privately given to congressional investigators in 1994) , Liggett claims it is giving the public an exhaustive list of every cigarette ingredient used in its brand. Previously tobacco companies also provided cigarette ingredients to the federal Department of Health and Human Services and for more than a decade, but HHS officials are legally not allowed to release that information.

Protecting Tobacco Companies’ Trade Secrets

David Remes, an attorney who represents the four other tobacco companies challenging the state of Massachusetts, said the case comes down to the tobacco industry’s right to protect its trade secrets – or profits over our health!

Click the link for Wikepedia’s full list of addictive ingredients in cigarettes.

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