Cigarette smoking is one of the most powerful addictions known; even more powerful than a dependence on alcohol, heroin, or cocaine. To grasp this well-documented fact, one really doesn t have to study all the supporting scientific evidence. One simply has to consider that no other drug is self administered with the persistence, regularity and the frequency of a cigarette. Since its large-scale industrial production early in this century, the popularity of the modern cigarette has been spreading like wildfire. Here is the first, and perhaps the most significant answer to the question [What s in a cigarette?]: Addiction is in a cigarette. Probing into what makes a cigarette so irresistible and addicting, it is for thenicotine found naturally in tobacco that the smoker smokes. Nicotine produces pleasurable feelings that make the smoker want to smoke more. However, it paralyzes breathing muscles, causes the resting heart rate of a smoker to increase 2 to 3 beats, and because nicotine also affects the chemistry of the brain and central nervous system, it affects the mood and temperament of the smoker. Hence, nicotine is in a cigarette.

Cigarette smoke is a complex mixture of organic and inorganic compounds caused by the burning of tobacco. Cigarette smoke generates more than 150 billion tar particles per cubic inch, constituting the visible portion. According to chemists at R.J. Reynolds, a well-known cigarette company, cigarette smoke is 10,000 times more concentrated than the automobile pollution at rush hour on a freeway. The lungs of smokers, puffing a daily ration of 20 to 60 low to high tar cigarettes, collect an annual deposit of one-quarter to one and one-half pounds of the gooey black material known as tar, which is made up of over 4,000 hazardous compounds. Hence, Tar is in a cigarette.