Finding it hard to give up smoking? Perhaps it’s because cigarettes are becoming more addictive.
The amount of nicotine that smokers typically inhale increased by 11 per cent per cigarette between 1998 and 2005, according to data supplied by tobacco companies to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
The increase is due both to higher concentrations of nicotine in cigarettes and to a reduced burn rate, which allows more puffs per cigarette. “It’s not an accident,” says Gregory Connolly, director of tobacco-control research at the Harvard School of Public Health, which analysed the companies’ figures. “It’s time we had the…
