Photo by Rick Geary

It’s against the law to divulge to the public the ingredients that go into tobacco products.

Dear Matthew Alice: What are all of the ingredients in cigarettes, and why aren't the tobacco companies legally required by the FDA to list those ingredients on the backs or sides of their packages like other products? — Kayla McFarland, Mission Hills

Your intrepid investigator pal Matthew Alice has gone to great lengths to bring truth and light into your dark little lives. But I’m sorry, kiddies, the line has to be drawn somewhere. And I draw it here. If I found out what glop goes into a Marlboro and passed that information on to you. I’d have some burly G-man on my doorstep in a flash. And he’d try to sweat out of me the name of my source, and before you know it, there I am trying to climb down a rope of bed sheets from a window in the federal slammer. You see, it’s against the law to divulge to the public the ingredients that go into tobacco products. For that bit of enlightened legislation, of course, we can thank the industry’s bulldog lobbying group, the Tobacco Institute, and its battalion of lawyers.

It might come as a surprise that cigarettes contain anything but tobacco and paper. Well, they do. When the cigarette industry developed low-tar and low-nicotine brands, they began using milder tobaccos and denser filters and punched holes in the filters to increase the amount of air inhaled with each puff. But the result was an unacceptably bland product. Manufacturers compensated by adding flavorings and other taste boosters. Cigarettes already contained additives to control product qualities like odor, burning rate, and freshness.

In 1984 a bill was introduced in Congress that resulted in the health warnings now seen on cigarette packs and advertising and also required manufacturers to submit to the Department of Health and Human Services a list of all cigarette additives. The industry whined that brand formulas were “trade secrets” and they shouldn’t be forced to disclose them. So they strong-armed our representatives into incorporating compromises into the law. First of all, the lists submitted to HHS don’t have to say which brands contain which additives and in what quantities. They’re just lists of all additives used in all brands by each manufacturer. Worse yet, the bill contained a compromise provision that made it illegal for anyone to disclose the lists to the public. So every year, the manufacturers dutifully submit their additive lists to HHS, where they’re locked in a safe.

A 1991 article on this subject in The Nation included a brief roster of ingredients that appear on tobacco additive lists required by the British and Canadian governments. Writer Myron Levin speculates that American-made cigarettes probably contain these or similar chemicals: shellac, turpentine, acetone, acetaldehyde, glyoxtal, methyl salicylate, licorice root, and caramel. Some of these are proven carcinogens in animal testing; some produce carcinogens when burned.

Year after year, representatives try to pass legislation requiring ingredient disclosure on cigarette packs. Year after year, the bills go nowhere. The most recent effort is HR 3943, the Fairness in Tobacco and Nicotine Regulation Act, from members of the congressional Task Force on Tobacco and Health. Among other things, this bill would bring all tobacco-related functions, from manufacture to promotion, under FDA control; at the moment, cigarettes don’t fall under FDA jurisdiction. The bill also requires all costs of enforcing the new legislation to be paid by the tobacco companies. Yeah, right. Don’t hold your breath.