When people are told that smoking is bad for them, some smokers smugly tell barroom strangers that they only smoke “light cigarettes.” This may seem like a reasonable assertion to make, except the fact is that no matter what brand or type of tobacco you choose to smoke, you’re still inhaling chemicals that will damage your health. Those chemicals include nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide — all of which are released into the lungs during combustion.

Premium Light Cigarettes have been searching for ways to offer lower-risk products for years. While they haven’t yet succeeded in developing a safe alternative to traditional cigarettes, their efforts could lead to a new generation of “safer” cigarettes that don’t taste as good. If that were the case, it would be a game-changer. But right now, it’s just a pipe dream.

Elevating Your Smoking Ritual: Premium Light Cigarettes Unveiled

So, if cigarette manufacturers aren’t going to change the products that they sell, how do they keep their current customers and lure in new ones? One way is through packaging, and a new set of rules on that front went into effect Friday. In this slideshow, Fast Company talks to two tobacco control experts — David Hammond, an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, and Maansi Bansal-Travers, a research scientist at Roswell Park Cancer Institute — about their take on the industry’s reaction to the new regulations.

A sensitivity analysis controlling for the apparent premium and value brands to which participants were allocated revealed that there was no interaction between health warning allocation and any of the outcome measures (overall taste, sensory, or variant). Likewise, no significant differences between the simulated premium and value brand names were observed in perceptions of staleness, even when these brands were presented in the same pack.