Health warning issued for hand-rolled cigarettes

Roll-your-own (RYO) cigarettes expose smokers to a similar level of cancer-causing chemicals when compared to their manufactured counterpart, scientists claim.

New research published in the journal Addiction Biology compared urine samples in 127 smokers of ready-made cigarettes and 28 samples from RYO cigarette smokers to check the levels of two known cancer causing chemical.

The results showed there were no differences in the concentrations of the toxins between manufactured and RYO cigarette smokers even when age, sex, body mass index, puffing behaviour and nicotine exposure were taken into account.

Lead researcher Dr Lion Shahab, from Cancer Research UK, said: “Many smokers believe that RYO cigarettes are more ‘natural’ and therefore are less harmful than manufactured cigarettes. The current findings suggest that this is not the case.”

Elspeth Lee, Cancer Research UK’s head of tobacco control added half of all long-term smokers die from their addiction to and so continued effort had to be made to reduce the impact that tobacco had on people’s lives.