To the Editor.—
The Wall Street Journal (Nov 1, 1978, p 18) suggests that "because of news accounts of a study by Gio B. Gori... much of the public [was left] with the impression that some cigarettes are relatively safe to smoke in limited quantity." The article reports that because of this, "Smokers of extremely low-tar cigarettes, who were once largely ignored by the industry, are the targets of intensifying market competition." This calls for a close look at the article by Gori and Lynch (240:1255, 1978), who conclude that smokers who would not exceed certain levels of intake of tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanide, and acrolein would subject themselves to a risk which could be considered "socially tolerable."Before 1960, smoking two cigarettes per day exposed the smoker to amounts of the aforementioned substances, which were tolerated without demonstrable epidemiologic effect. Gori and Lynch calculated the