• Introducing cancer prevention
• Smoking and tobacco
  • Breathe competition
  • What’s in a cigarette?
  • Why do people smoke?
  • Common questions
  • Reasons to quit
  • Giving up
  • Children and smoking
  • Second-hand smoke
  • Smokeless tobacco
  • Real life stories
  • How do we know?
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• Smoke is Poison
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Smoking and cancer: What’s in a cigarette?

A cigarette may look harmless enough - tobacco leaves covered in classic white paper. But in fact, each cigarette contains a complex mix of chemicals deliberately combined to keep smokers hooked.

A cleverly engineered product

Cigarette manufacturers design cigarettes to provide smokers with a steady dose of nicotine. Nicotine is a highly addictive drug.

And its not just nicotine that makes smoking so enjoyable. Cigarettes also contain a variety of additives to make them nicer tasting and easy to smoke.

A former tobacco company director commented: "The modern cigarette is extremely complex. It contains everything from sugar to liquorice, chocolate, herbs and spices. There are 8000 or more chemicals that come out when you light it and having them delivered in the right ratios is a substantial engineering feat."

Chemicals in tobacco smoke

When a cigarette burns it releases thousands of different chemicals, many of them harmful to health. These include arsenic, benzene, formaldehyde, cadmium, hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide and radioactive polonium-210.

To find out more about these chemicals, have a look at our Smoke is Poison website

Are low tar cigarettes better for you?

'Low tar' cigarettes are just as harmful for you as regular brands.

You might think that the tar and nicotine numbers on cigarette packs would correspond to the amount of tar and nicotine you actually breathe in. But in fact, the numbers are based on tests that use machines to smoke the cigarettes rather than real people.

When real people smoke 'low tar' cigarettes they breathe in much harder, to get the amount of nicotine their body craves. These cigarettes may be carefully designed to taste weaker but they are probably doing your body just as much damage as the 'stronger' brands.