Naturally similar: Natural American Spirit and Nat Shermans new cigarette

In 2015, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent warning letters to makers of Natural American Spirit (NAS) and Nat Sherman cigarettes regarding their use of misleading descriptors such as ‘additive-free’ and ‘natural’ on product labels and advertising.1 2 The result was a 2017 agreement to remove the terms ‘additive-free’ and ‘natural’ as claims, while still allowing NAS to retain the word ‘natural’ in its brand name.3 The agreement also allowed the use of the term ‘organic’ and a specific claim: ‘Tobacco Ingredients: Tobacco and Water’—both claims that have been utilised in previous NAS ads.

Post-agreement ads for NAS (owned by Reynolds American) now claim its cigarettes are ‘real’, ‘simple’ and ‘different’, and made of only two ingredients: tobacco and water (figure 1). The implied message is clear: these cigarettes are different (from other cigarettes) and simple (because there are only two…

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