The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), long charged with testing the tar and nicotine contents of cigarettes, told Congress that the task should be given instead to one of the federal government's healthcare agencies, Consumer Affairs reported Nov. 15.

FTC Commissioner William Kovacic said machine-testing of cigarettes, widely known as the "FTC Method," was designed to yield uniform results about smoking, not to mimic human consumption of cigarettes.

When the test was developed in the late 1960s, "most public health officials believed that reducing the amount of 'tar' in a cigarette could reduce a smoker's risk of lung cancer; therefore, it was thought that giving consumers uniform and standardized information about the tar and nicotine yields of cigarettes would help smokers make informed decisions about the cigarettes they smoked," he said.

Later research revealed that people smoke much differently; for example, smokers of so-called 'light' cigarettes tend to inhale more deeply and cover air holes in cigarette filters, largely negating any benefits of lower "tar" and nicotine content.

"The Commission has been concerned for some time that the current test method may be misleading to individual consumers who rely on the ratings it produces as indicators of the amount of tar and nicotine they actually will get from their cigarettes," said Kovacic.

The FTC has been asking Congress since 1999 to shift the testing responsibility to another agency. "Although the Commission brings a strong, market-based expertise to its scrutiny of consumer protection matters, it does not have the specialized scientific expertise needed to design and evaluate scientific test methodologies," FTC noted.

Another FTC commissioner, Pamela Jones Harbour, also said that Congress should ban cigarette companies from making any claims based on the FTC testing.