According to information published today by our colleagues from " Monde“, Tobacco companies could well cheat on the tar and nicotine content indicated on cigarette packages. The National Committee Against Smoking filed a complaint in early February against four tobacco companies for "deliberately endangering the person of others".
RATE OF TAR AND NICOTINE BIAISE?
Should we speak of "tobaccogate", as there was a "dieselgate"? The criminal complaint filed in early February before the public prosecutor by the National Committee Against Smoking (NCTC), accusing the French subsidiaries of four tobacco companies (British American Tobacco, Philip Morris, Japan Tobacco and Imperial Brand) of « deliberately endangering the person of others »in any case can only evoke the recent scandal of diesel engines rigged with software artificially lowering pollutant emissions during regulatory tests.
With regard to tobacco, it is not a question of software riggers and oxides of nitrogen, but of micro-perforations of the filters, tar and nicotine. The result is the same: the official levels of these substances, displayed or measured by the regulator, are much lower than reality. According to the CNCT complaint, that Le Monde could consult, « the actual tar and nicotine content would be, according to sources, between two and ten times higher [to that indicated] for tar and five times higher for nicotine » figures that come from the scientific literature or the cigarette manufacturers themselves.
To understand, we must know that the filters of almost all cigarettes currently on the market are pierced with many micro-orifices imperceptible to the naked eye, 
, promising « breakdown » inhaled smoke.
This device induces a "dilution" of the smoke passing through the filter, but this dilution occurs mainly when the smoke is extracted by means of a regulatory smoking machine, used to measure the levels of tar, nicotine or even carbon monoxide. carbon in tobacco combustion products. On the contrary, during the smoking of cigarettes by a human, and not by the regulatory machine, the grip of the lips and the fingers on the filter closes most of the micro-perforations….
