Cigarettes, cars, and public health
Should cigarettes have a low or high tar certification? Should the court be approached to force cigarette companies to make safer cigarettes for the general public? There are reasons for asking these questions. The Supreme Court has given top priority to health while ordering car manufacturers to observe emission norms in Delhi. But nowhere in the world has any court forced tobacco companies to manufacture safer cigarettes, though smoking is a significant health risk.
What very few people know, including smokers, is that the technology to produce safer cigarettes exists. A report prepared by the uk -based anti-smoking lobby group Action on Smoking and Health and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund revealed that the international tobacco industry has accumulated about 58 patents for techniques to bring down the level of toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke. More interestingly, not a single one has been implemented (see