Do you enjoy or hate smoking?? Have a look at how it is produced!!

The process of making cigarettes begins in the field where the tobacco is grown and harvested. There are two types of domestic tobacco: Bright and Burley.

The unique taste of American cigarettes is a result of the blending of Burley and Bright tobacco's which have different characteristics. Once the tobacco is harvested and dried, a process known as curing, it is then shipped to a stemmer.

Next, stems and veins are separated from the lamina. The preferred part of the tobacco leaf, the lamina is sent to a warehouse, where it is aged for as long as two years to mellow and develop its flavor. During the aging process, the crop is evaluated to determine its characteristics, for the purpose of blending.

In order to make cigarettes most efficiently and economically, every part of the tobacco leaf is used. But, in order to use many of those parts, further processing is required. In addition to the Burley and Bright lamina which is blended with imported oriental tobacco, there are five other components of the tobacco blend; reconstituted leaf, blended leaf, improved stem, expanded stem and expanded tobacco.

Reconstituted Leaf (RL) is comprised of stems, small lamina and other small particles of tobacco recovered from the manufacturing processes in order to be utilized in cigarette. Manufacturing RL is processed into a form, to resemble lamina ;much like a sheet of paper.

In order to make that RL sheet, the water-soluble material must be separated from the tobacco fiber. This is done by adding hot water and agitating it to separate the water-soluble material from the tobacco fiber. Once the liquid is separated from the tobacco fiber, the fiber is refined and processed into sheet form. The separated water soluble material contains numerous compounds; all of which existed in and were naturally extracted from the tobacco material. The water is partially evaporated leaving the tobacco solubles.

The solubles are then mixed with flavorings, preservatives and humectants which help maintain moisture and pliability. The tobacco solubles are then reapplied to the RL sheet. The RL is dried, cut into lamina sized pieces and is ready to become part of the tobacco blend. At no point in the RL process is additional nicotine introduced. In fact, the nicotine

level in the finished RL is 20 to 25% lower than the nicotine level in the raw materials like RL blended leaf.

BL(Blended Leaf) is comprised of Burley stems and small tobacco particles recovered from tobacco processing. They are ground to a uniform size, blended and mixed with processing AIDS to release the pectin a naturally occurring carbohydrate in plants. When heated pectin forms a gel like material that binds the particles together, flavorings, humectants and preservatives are added and the mixture is cast onto a moving belt, heated and dried to form the sheet.

In addition, expanded products yield less tar and nicotine because some nicotine is lost in the expansion process as well. ES(Expanded Stem) are made from bright tobacco stems which yield less tar nicotine than lamina. Expanded products are manufactured with two basic processes: used bright tobacco stems that are moistened with water and steam.

The stems are then rolled and cut humectants are added for moisture retention. Sugar is added for flavor. This is dried in an expansion Tower to its final. Moisture is made by steaming and then drying to produce ET(expanded tobacco). It uses cut bright and burly lamina with sugar and humectants added and then it is impregnated with liquid carbon dioxide and expanded in a tower much the same as ES at this point.

The components are then transported to the cigarette manufacturing facilities depending on which brand of cigarette is to be produced. The amount of each component to be used is selected by a computer based on the leaf department formulation. The bright and burly lamina, RL, BL and oriental tobaccos are individually conditioned with steam to increase moisture and temperature to reduce breakage.

The leaf separation process is continued in the feeders and air separators. The bright and oriental tobaccos are mixed and a leaf dressing is applied consisting of humectants and flavors. The Burley lamina has a similar flavor spray applied including humectants, sugar, chocolate and licorice and then it is re-dried. An additional specific Burley dressing is applied. These components are then blended together with the RL and BL.

According to the formulations, for each cigarette brand, that partial blend is steamed and then goes to the cutting line where it is cut to a uniform size and sent to a rotary dryer to reduce and control the moisture content. At this point, ET and bright Burley, oriental small lamina are added in brand specific formulations and the total blend. All the tobacco that goes into a cigarette is now complete.

The tobacco then goes to the flavor cylinder where final flavorings are added using denatured ethyl alcohol. Denatured alcohol is alcohol which has been rendered undrinkable. It must be used in this process because these flavorings will not dissolve in water. Alcohol denatured with nicotine sulfate and methylene blue is the only denatured alcohol approved to be used in tobacco processing by the

Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.