Letter: Don't hold breath for safer cigarette

WITH REGARD to the article "Long wait ahead for safer cigarettes" (News, 5 September), the cigarette industry may like to try and promote new products as "safer" cigarettes but the reality is that there is no such thing as a "safe" cigarette.

By nature, cigarettes are addictive and harmful and kill half of all their long-term users.

The tobacco industry will do all it can to keep its share of the market and its very large profits, both in Scotland and around the world. They have been researching safer products for several decades now and have not yet succeeded in producing one.

Tobacco manufacturers would love to be able to market such a product as they are continually looking to recruit new smokers to replace those who quit or die. However, use of the word "safe" would give smokers a false sense of security.

Smoking is responsible for a quarter of all adult deaths in Scotland every year and there is a huge amount of work being done to tackle this appalling record by helping smokers to quit and preventing young people from smoking. The tobacco industry makes and markets a lethal product, and is by nature an industry built on deception.

Sheila Duffy, ASH Scotland; Dr Charles Saunders Deputy Chairman, BMA Scotland