Cigarette filters do nothing for smokers’ health and just create plastic pollution – they should be banned

By Jonathan Livingstone-Banks, Lecturer & Senior Researcher in Evidence-Based Healthcare, University of Oxford
Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, Assistant Professor of Health Promotion and Policy, UMass Amherst

Cigarette filters were widely introduced in the 1950s, ostensibly to make smoking less harmful. With growing public concern about lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases, the tobacco industry responded not by making cigarettes safer, but by making them seem safer. Filters were the perfect innovation – not for health, but for public relations.

Over 70 years later, we know that filters don’t reduce harm. In fact, they may exacerbate some risks. By softening smoke and making it easier to inhale deeply, filters may actually raise the risk…

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