"Light" cigarette brands, promise of smaller amounts of harmful tar and nicotine, to pursuade women torn between the desire to smoke and health worries.
"How unfortunate that the industry used these findings to exploit women and not help them.
Cigarette designs and ingredients were manipulated in an effort to make cigarettes more palatable to women and to complement advertising allusions of smooth, healthy, weight-controlling, stress-reducing smoke," Jack Henningfield of Johns Hopkins University and colleagues wrote in a commentary.
They said internal documents released by tobacco companies under a 1998 court settlement show the companies created cigarettes, including "slim" and so-called "light" brands, in part to attract women.
"These internal documents reveal that the tobacco industry's targeting of women goes far beyond marketing and advertising," said Carpenter. Understanding what the companies have done, Carpenter's team said, is key to finding ways to help women quit smoking.
In the United States, 19 percent of adult women and 24 percent of adult men smoke, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Smoking is the single biggest cause of heart disease and cancer.
