Doctor Says Low-Tar Brands Lure Young Women to Smoke

Low-tar, low-nicotine cigarettes are "luring" young women into the smoking habit, according to a Harvard University researcher who calls the tobacco products the "pharmacologic equivalent of a training bra."

Dr. William Bennett said yesterday recent studies show women are more sensitive than males to the effects of nicotine overdose, a queasy, often nauseating sensation that accompanies smoking a high-nicotine cigarette. The symptoms of ten deterred young women from smoking, Bennett said. The current availability of low-nicotine brands, which are less likely to produce the overdose effect, is "making it more easy for young women to yield to social pressure and begin smoking."

Smoking low-nicotine brands may not lower a smoker's intake of harmful substances, Bennett said, because, "by puffing faster, inhaling more deeply, and lighting up more often than the standard smoker, one can receive more of everything."

Bennett, the editor of the Harvard Medical School health newsletter, said the relative hazards of the extra-mild cigarettes still are unclear, but added that there has been an alarming increase in the past 15 years in the number of young women of child--bearing age who are smoking.

The availability of the new low-tar and-nicotine brands may be especially harmful to women who may continue to smoke during the child-bearing months.

"It is not nicotine but carbon monoxide that has been proven to harm the unborn child and low-tar cigarettes do not decrease the amount of carbon monoxide inhaled." Bennett said.