Medicine: The Dangerous Last Puff

Ever since statistics began to point to some connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, the world's tobacco industries have been devising ways to cut down the effects of tars and nicotine. Last week the Swedish tobacco monopoly settled on a fractions-of-an-inch policy: the last puffs do more harm than the first. Testing 19 local and 18 foreign brands, the Swedish Institute for People's Health found that king-sized cigarettes give the smoker more tars and nicotine if smoked to the same stub as a regular, much less than a regular if smoked only for 1⅞ inches, the usual length of a...

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