Chemicals in Cigarettes: From Plant to Product to Puff

You probably know that cigarettes can kill you—in fact, smoking kills half of those who don't quit¹—but do you really have the full story? Do you know how many harmful chemicals are in cigarettes or how they get into the product?

FDA created these videos and interactive tools to lay the foundation for an important public health goal: we aim to publish a list of the levels of harmful and potentially harmful chemicals in tobacco, in a way that is easy for the public to understand. As an important step toward that goal, we invite you to explore the chemicals in tobacco in three stages of cigarettes, from plant to product to puff, in the videos below.

Chemicals in Every Tobacco Plant

It is a fact that cigarettes contain dangerous chemicals.² But how do these chemicals get into cigarettes? Are most of the harmful chemicals added during the manufacturing process?

Fact: Some of the toxic chemicals in tobacco are present in the plant itself.³ Watch the tobacco growth video to uncover more.

Chemicals in Every Cigarette Product

Ok, so harmful chemicals are in the tobacco plant. What happens during manufacturing? Is that when more dangerous chemicals are added?

Fact: Not all of the harmful chemicals created during cigarette manufacturing are man-made. Some of the carcinogens occur naturally as tobacco is cured.³ Watch the video about cigarette manufacturing.

Chemicals in Every Puff of Cigarette Smoke

How many harmful and potentially harmful chemicals are in a cigarette? Is there more than nicotine and tar?

Fact: There are more than 7,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke.² More than 70 of those chemicals are linked to cancer.^4,5,6,7 Watch the video on cigarette smoke to learn more about what happens when you light up.

Think You Know All the Chemicals Found in Cigarettes?

Here are some of the 93 known harmful and potentially harmful chemicals in cigarettes:

 

 

 

Downloads

Download and share with people in your life these images about the health effects of dangerous chemicals in cigarettes. To download:

1. Click on the image below that you would like to download and share to open up a larger version.
2. On the large version, right-click to Save As and save the image to your computer.

 

 

 

 

 

References

1. Doll R, Peto R, Wheatley K, Gray R, Sutherland I. Mortality in relation to smoking: 40 years observations on male British doctors. British Medical Journal 1994; 309:901-911.
2. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS). A Report of the Surgeon General: How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease: What It Means to You (Consumer Booklet). Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health; 2010.
3. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS). How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease: The Biology and Behavioral Basis for Smoking-Attributable Disease: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health; 2010.
4. Hecht SS. Research opportunities related to establishing standards for tobacco products under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Nicotine & Tobacco Research. 2012; 14(1):18-28.
5. Hoffmann D, Hoffmann I, El Bayoumy K. The less harmful cigarette: a controversial issue. A tribute to Ernst L. Wynder. Chemical Research in Toxicology. 2001; 14:767-790.
6. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Some non-heterocyclic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and some related exposures. In: IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans. Vol. 92. Lyon, France: International Agency for Research on Cancer; 2010.
7. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Tobacco smoke and involuntary smoking. In: IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans. Vol. 83. Lyon, France: International Agency for Research on Cancer; 2004.

Light, Low, Mild or Similar Descriptors

Tobacco products that are labeled or advertised with the terms "light," "low," or "mild" or similar descriptors mislead the public into thinking that these products cause fewer health problems than other cigarettes. However, they still pose a heavy health risk. Research shows that:

• Smokers who use light cigarettes do not reduce their risk for developing smoking-related cancers and other diseases.¹
• Switching to light cigarettes does not help smokers quit, and may actually decrease the motivation to quit.^2,3

In order to better protect the public from misleading claims, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act prohibits manufacturers from producing and distributing for sale any tobacco products labeled or advertised as "light," "low," or "mild" without a Modified Risk Tobacco Product order from the FDA. Manufacturers must meet rigorous criteria before we can issue an order authorizing the marketing of a modified risk tobacco product. If products are marketed as "light," "low," or "mild" without an MRTP order, FDA considers these claims to be health fraud.

Sources

1. National Cancer Institute (NCI). "Light" Cigarettes and Cancer Risk. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Health, National Cancer Institute. Updated October 28, 2010. http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/tobacco/light-cigarettes-fact-sheet#q2. Accessed August 25, 2015.
2. Tindle H, Shiffman S, Hartman A, Bost J. Switching to "lighter" cigarettes and quitting smoking. Tobacco Control. 2009;18(6):485-490.
3. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Tobacco Control Act: Resources and FDA Regulations. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Updated July 20, 2015. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/stateandcommunity/fda/fda_regs/index.htm. Accessed August 25, 2015.
    

CTP Newsroom

News & Events

Recent news, press releases, meetings, workshops, newsletters, and other announcements are listed below.

2017

• October 2017: FDA Actions Regarding Tobacco Manufacturers/Importers Affected by Recent Natural Disasters
• September 2017: Newsletter - CTPConnect
• September 2017: FDA Announces Flavor Developer and Manufacturer Site Tours Program
• August 2017: Newsletter - Spotlight on Science
• July 2017: FDA’s New Plan for Tobacco and Nicotine Regulation
• June 2017: Newsletter - CTPConnect
• June 2017: Statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D. on the 2016 National Youth Tobacco Survey Results
• June 2017: CDC Press Release - Youth Tobacco Product Use, Including E-Cigarettes, Drops During 2015-2016
• May 2017: Web Statement
• April 2017: Newsletter - Spotlight on Science
• April 2017: Public Workshop - Battery Safety Concerns in Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) Public Workshop
• March 2017: Newsletter - CTPConnect
• February 2017: Web Feature - Dip, Chew, Snuff, Snus: "Smokeless" Doesn’t Mean "Safe"
• January 2017: Web Statement - FDA Offers Compliance Policy for Certain Vape Shop Activities in New Draft Guidance

2016

• December 2016: Press Release - FDA takes action on applications seeking to market modified risk tobacco products
• December 2016: Web Feature - Lessons Learned from the First Review of Modified Risk Tobacco Product (MRTP) Applications
• November 2016: Public Workshop - Risk Assessment
• November 2016: Web Feature - How Cigarettes Are Made and How You Can Make a Plan to Quit
• October 2016: Public Workshop - The Premarket Tobacco Product Application for Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS)
• September 2016: Press Release - FDA protects kids from illegal sales of e-cigarettes, e-liquids and cigars
• May 2016: Press Release - FDA takes significant steps to protect Americans from dangers of tobacco through new regulation
• May 2016: Press Release - FDA launches public education campaign to prevent and reduce tobacco use among LGBT young adults
• April 2016: Press Release - FDA launches first ad campaign focused on dangers of smokeless tobacco among rural teens
• April 2016: Public Workshop - Biomarkers of Potential Harm
• March 2016: Web Feature - Diabetes and Tobacco Use
• March 2016: Meeting - Society For Research On Nicotine and Tobacco
• March 2016: Public Workshop - Waterpipes

Archived Content

Search for past news and events in the FDA.gov web archive.

• Press release archive
• Email newsletters & web statements archive
• Features archive
• Public meeting and workshop archive

Report Potential Tobacco Product Violation

The minimum legal age to purchase tobacco is 18 – and yet, 87 percent of adult daily smokers begin smoking before age 18.¹ Together, we can change that.

The Tobacco Control Act and related regulations give FDA tools to help keep tobacco out of the hands of America’s youth. But you also have an opportunity to play a key role. The public is crucial in helping FDA enforce tobacco regulations to protect America’s youth. 

What Is a Potential Tobacco Product Violation?

Potential tobacco product violations include (but are not limited to):

• Sales to minors
• Flavored cigarette sales
• Illegal marketing and advertising – The Tobacco Control Act gives the FDA the ability to regulate certain marketing and advertising activities by the tobacco industry, including:
  • Describing tobacco products as “light,” “mild,” or “low” – or claiming a product is safer or less harmful without an FDA order
  • Distributing t-shirts or other promotional or novelty items with brand names of cigarette or smokeless tobacco products 
  • Sponsoring events using the brand name of a tobacco product
• Distribution of free samples of tobacco products except in limited circumstances
• Placement of cigarette or smokeless tobacco product vending machines in prohibited areas (or providing access to self-service or direct access of tobacco products in prohibited areas)
• Sale of cigarettes in packages of less than 20

How Can I Report a Potential Tobacco Violation?

If you see what you believe to be a violation of the Tobacco Control Act or other related regulations, you can:

• Submit online: Online Form
• Call the Tobacco Call Center using CTP's toll-free number: 1.877.CTP.1373
• Send an email: CTPCompliance@FDA.hhs.gov
• Print and mail: Paper form (PDF) to
  Potential Tobacco Products Violation Report
  Food and Drug Administration
  Center for Tobacco Products
  Office of Compliance and Enforcement
  Document Control Center
  Building 71, Room G335
  10903 New Hampshire Avenue
  Silver Spring, MD 20993

What Happens When I Submit a Potential Violation?

FDA will evaluate any report submitted to determine if the activity is a violation of the Tobacco Control Act or related regulations. Before deciding what follow-up action, if any, is necessary, we will check to see if the product named in the complaint is regulated by FDA. If the product is regulated by a different federal or state agency, or different part of FDA, we will forward the complaint to the applicable entity for review.

FDA does not rely solely on what was submitted to take enforcement action. After reviewing a complaint, our investigation may include:

• performing an inspection of a tobacco product manufacturer, distributor, or importer;
• conducting a compliance check inspection of a tobacco retailer; or
• initiating monitoring and surveillance of a tobacco product manufacturer’s or retailer’s website.

FDA may determine that there is no evidence of a violation, or we may find evidence of the reported violation or of other potential violations that requires additional surveillance, monitoring, and/or inspections.

Privacy and Anonymity

All reports to FDA remain private to the extent allowed by law as explained in FDA’s Privacy Policy. Reports can be submitted anonymously; however, reports accompanied by names and contact information are helpful if FDA regulators need to follow-up for more information.

Children's Privacy: FDA will not collect or store information from children under 13. If a child sends us an email inquiry or comment, we will answer it and then delete the email from our files.

Health Fraud

What is Tobacco-Related Health Fraud?

False or misleading claims in the promotion, advertising, distribution or sale of tobacco products, including suggestions that a tobacco product is safer, less harmful, contains a reduced level or is free of a harmful substance, or presents a lower risk of tobacco-related disease compared to other tobacco products.

Sections 902, 903 and 911 of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act provide more information.

 

Health Fraud Example 2: The fictional ABC Cigarette promotion describes their product as "light," and claims that the filter "removes seven times more tar and nicotine." These claims may be misleading, suggesting a reduced harm.  Both of these claims require scientific evidence and an order from FDA before they can be used.

Tobacco-Related Health Fraud

All tobacco products are harmful to your health, despite what they taste, smell, or look like.¹  Claiming less harm or reduced risk of disease from using tobacco products misleads consumers to think that these products are safe to use.  FDA considers these kinds of claims to be health fraud. These kinds of claims can only be made after scientific evidence to support them has been submitted to FDA, and FDA has issued an order permitting their marketing use. To date, no tobacco products have met the requirements that would permit them to make claims of reduced risk or harm to users and nonusers of their regulated tobacco products. These requirements were put in place so that American tobacco consumers are not misled about the harms of tobacco products.

Examples of Tobacco-Related Health Fraud

Recently, FDA issued a number of warning letters to tobacco internet retailers for illegally marketing tobacco products and using claims or descriptions that may mislead consumers by suggesting reduced harm or risk in using a tobacco product.  The letters cited several, specific examples of tobacco-related health fraud including:

• Marketing, advertising or promotional claims that suggest the product is safer, healthier or less risky to use, like: 
  • “Safe Smoke Filter”
  • “Less Toxic”
• Labels, internet sites, or other promotions that describe a tobacco product as “Light,” “Low,” or “Mild”

Health Fraud Example 1: While the fictional XYZ brand of smokeless tobacco displays the required warning statement, the label also states that XYZ brand is a "less toxic product."  This is an example of health fraud unless this claim was submitted to FDA with supporting scientific evidence and FDA issued an order.

Women's Health and Smoking

Smoking continues to have a profound impact on the health and well-being of women and their families in the United States.

• About 13.6% of all women smoke cigarettes.¹
• Every day, nearly 1,400 girls under 18 years of age smoke their first cigarette.²
• Nearly 7 percent of all high school aged girls smoke cigarettes.³

Impacts of Smoking on Women and Their Families

There's abundant research about the many harms of smoking—whether it's the dangerous chemicals, the addictive properties, or the damage smoking causes to the body, these effects can have a profound impact on not only your own body, but also those around you. Here are some facts about smoking's effects on women, families, babies, and pregnant moms.

For Women

• Smoking causes coronary heart disease, cancer, and stroke—the first, second, and fourth leading causes of death for women in the United States.⁴
• Smoking cigarettes causes chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). People with COPD have trouble breathing and slowly start to die from lack of air. Women who smoke cigarettes are up to 40 times more likely to develop COPD than female nonsmokers.⁵
• Life expectancy for smokers—both male and female—is at least 10 years less than for nonsmokers.⁶

For Families

• Secondhand smoke causes disease and premature death in nonsmoking adults and children.⁷
• The U.S. Surgeon General estimates that living with a smoker increases a nonsmoker's chances of developing lung cancer by 20-30%.⁷
• Exposure to secondhand smoke increases children's risk for ear infections, lower respiratory illnesses, more frequent and more severe asthma attacks, and slowed lung growth, and can cause coughing, wheezing, phlegm, and breathlessness.^7,8
• Teens are more likely to smoke if they have friends or family who smoke.⁹

For Babies and Pregnant Moms

• Smoking  during pregnancy can affect the baby's health.¹⁰
• Infants born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy are at a higher risk of low birth weight, birth defects like cleft palate, lungs that don't develop in a normal way, and sudden infant death syndrome.^4,8

Next Steps

The good news is that you can do something about it now—smoking truly is what the CDC terms a "modifiable" risk factor.

Encourage the women in your life—the mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends—to put their own health first by finding a quit method that works for them.

Youth and Tobacco

Almost 90 percent of adult daily smokers started smoking by the age of 18,¹ and nearly 2,500 youth under 18 smoke their first cigarette every day in the U.S.² In fact, use of tobacco products, no matter what type, is almost always started and established during adolescence when the developing brain is most vulnerable to nicotine addiction.^3,4 If the current trajectory of smoking rates continues, 5.6 million children in the U.S. alive today will die prematurely as a result of smoking.⁵ 

These facts highlight a critical need for stronger, more targeted youth tobacco prevention efforts grounded in regulatory actions designed to protect America’s kids.

FDA's Plan for Tobacco and Nicotine Regulation

On July 28, 2017, the FDA announced a comprehensive plan for tobacco and nicotine regulation that places nicotine, and the issue of addiction, at the center of the agency's tobacco regulation efforts. This plan will serve as a multiyear roadmap to better protect kids and significantly reduce tobacco-related disease and death in the U.S. One of the key efforts announced includes starting a national public dialogue about lowering nicotine levels in cigarettes to non-addictive levels to decrease the likelihood that future generations become addicted to cigarettes. 

Understanding Youth Tobacco Use in the U.S.

The FDA is committed to a science-based approach that addresses public health issues associated with tobacco use. That's why we collaborate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office on Smoking and Health on the only nationally-representative survey of middle and high school students that focuses exclusively on tobacco use—the National Youth Tobacco Survey. Results from this survey provide the FDA with some key national indicators of the effectiveness of comprehensive tobacco prevention and control programs.

Public Health Education to Reduce Youth Tobacco Use

After decades of steadily declining rates, youth tobacco use has largely plateaued since 2011. While cigarette and cigar use have generally declined, sharp increases in e-cigarette and hookah tobacco use among teens in previous years have offset progress overall.⁶ 

Further, youth who use tobacco today do so despite the efforts that led so many of their peers to remain tobacco-free in the past, making them a harder audience to reach and motivate with tobacco prevention messages.⁷  

With these challenges in mind, the FDA developed and launched several award-winning youth tobacco prevention campaigns to educate at-risk teens about the harmful effects of tobacco use. Campaign advertising airing between 2014 and 2017 focused on communicating the dangers of combustible cigarettes and smokeless tobacco use. In fall 2017, the FDA launched new advertising as part of its “The Real Cost” campaign to educate teens about the dangers of using electronic nicotine delivery systems, like e-cigarettes. Many e-cigarettes contain nicotine, the same highly addictive chemical in other tobacco products, which can disrupt adolescent brain development. 

Flavored Tobacco

In 2017, the FDA intends to issue an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to seek public comment on the role that flavors in tobacco products—including menthol—play in attracting youth. The agency already banned certain characterizing flavors in cigarettes in 2009, including fruit and clove , because of their appeal to youth. The agency's national effort to enforce this provision of the Tobacco Control Act and to advise parents about the dangers of flavored tobacco products was one of its important first steps toward responsible tobacco regulation to protect youth.

Regulations Restricting the Sale and Distribution of Tobacco Products to Protect Children and Adolescents

Since 2009, the FDA has regulated cigarettes, smokeless, and roll-your-own tobacco. In 2016, the FDA finalized a rule to regulate all tobacco products, including:

• E-cigarettes/electronic cigarettes/vaporizers
• Cigars
• Hookah (waterpipe tobacco)
• Pipe tobacco
• Nicotine gels
• Dissolvables

These rules protect children and adolescents by restricting youth access to all tobacco products by:

• Not allowing products to be sold to anyone younger than 18 and requiring age verification via photo ID
• Not allowing tobacco products to be sold in vending machines (unless in an adult-only facility)
• Not allowing the distribution of free samples of tobacco products

Youth Tobacco Use: Results from the 2016 National Youth Tobacco Survey

We are committed to a science-based approach that addresses the public health issues associated with tobacco use. That's why we collaborate with CDC on the only nationally representative survey of middle and high school students that focuses exclusively on tobacco use—the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS). NYTS was designed to provide national data on long-term, intermediate, and short-term indicators key to the design, implementation, and evaluation of comprehensive tobacco prevention and control programs.

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