Tobacco industry appears to have evaded FDA ban on 'light' cigarette descriptors

New research from Harvard School of Public Health (HPSH) shows that one year after the federal government passed a law banning word descriptors such as "light,""mild," and "low" on cigarette packages, smokers can still easily identify their brands because of color-coding that tobacco companies added to "light" packs after the ban. These findings suggest that the companies have, in effect, been able to evade the ban on misleading wording—thus still conveying the false and deceptive message that lights are safer than "regular" cigarettes.