The Rise of the Cigarette Filter
A Hungarian inventor named Boris Aivaz is credited with inventing the cigarette filter in 1927. His innovation did not catch on during his lifetime though, as nobody saw the need for filters on their cigarettes and there was a lack of machinery that could make cigarettes with filters (Hoffman, 1997). Filtered cigarettes were considered rare until the early 1950’s, when doctors and researchers began to make speculative announcements that linked lung disease to smoking. In response to this panic, manufacturers began to broadly introduce a machine that would put filters in cigarettes (Hoffman, 1997). Since the public believed that these filtered cigarettes were “safer”, they rapidly took over the market by …show more content…
With cost in terms of health, the cost of a filtered cigarette is lower than the cost of an unfiltered cigarette because consumers believe that filtered cigarettes are safer. The benefits (satisfying the nicotine craving) are relatively the same as smokers find ways to beat the filter’s design. Therefore, consumers buy more filtered cigarettes now than they would have if they were unfiltered only because they think it is safer and weaker (Harris, 2011). If consumers knew that filtered cigarettes were basically as potent and strong as unfiltered cigarettes, they’d buy less. The amount of smokers in society has gone down from 42% in 1965 to 18% in 2012 due to social stigmas and increasing knowledge on smoking’s relation to disease and restrictions on where to smoke (Finan, 2007). Despite this, the tobacco industry is at a massive peak growth (Harris, 2011). This can be attributed to the false sense of security brought on by filtered cigarettes, which allows consumers to believe they can smoke even more cigarettes because they are not hurting themselves as much (Harris, 2011). Thus, the innovation of the filter has kept the industry operating at a high level even during a massive decrease in consumers …show more content…
The gains comes in the form of keeping the industry operating at a high level despite a decrease in the number of smokers while the losses can be attributed to an increase in money spent on political lobbying. Some experts suggest disposing of the entire concept of the filter cigarette altogether (Gaines, 2013). Resorting to this measure would surely result in a major decrease in profits for the tobacco industry, as they would no longer be advertising a “safe” cigarette. New science has been able to create a biodegradeble filter and some cigarette packs now come with a compartment to discard cigarette filters in (Djordjevic, 2009). These gradual efforts may encourage the environmental lobbies to ease off on their attacks on the tobacco industry. So, the future’s filter could either be a biodegradeable filter or no filter at all. Whatever it may be, it will always have an impact on the tobacco