Health experts have notified that the Chinese public thinks yet that low-tar cigarettes are less dangerous than normal ones. The health experts’ goal is to correct this ancient myth among Chinese crowd. China's first low-tar cigarette appeared in 1976, more than a decade later than in the US. Experts said that in China even doctors believe in the low-tar cigarettes.

An earlier study by an international tobacco-control program in 2006 has also found that China is among 14 countries and regions with the highest percentage of wrong ideas about low-tar cigarettes.

A recent survey have found that 60 percent of answerers believed smokers take in less tar - a carcinogen - from low-tar cigarettes, while 56.83 percent of those polled said that smoking such cigarettes will be safer than puffing on other types.

"The so-called low-tar cigarettes are as harmful as other tobacco products. The trick is in the cigarette design," said Wu Yiqun, the survey designer and director of the research center.

Experts said that low-tar cigarettes are characterized according to tar levels in cigarette smoke measured by machines. Anti-tobacco researchers added that in order to get lower tar levels, tobacco producers changed the design of cigarettes, such as adding ventilation holes invisible to the naked eye, to dilute the tar in smoke from such cigarettes.

Smokers are exposed to the fatal substances emitted by cigarettes even though they smoke cigarettes with a low-tar level.

Zhi Xiuyi, professor and director of Beijing Lung Cancer Center, mentioned that medical evidence in the past five decades also show that the incidence of lung cancer has not drop from the prevalence of low-tar cigarettes.

Zhi said:" China is paying more and more attention to controlling smoking. I attended more than a dozen activities last year that promote smoking bans. But more needs to be done to let people know that low-tar cigarettes are fatal, too. There is no 'safe level' of smoking."

"Therefore, low-tar cigarettes are invented by tobacco producers to have smokers let down their guard against the harmful effects of tobacco and allure them to continue smoking," Wu said.

There are reportedly 350 million smokers in China. About 1 million people die each year because of smoking-related diseases, such as lung cancer.