To research the effects of smoking, "Philip Morris experimenters subjected 1,000 rats to two years of breathing either diesel engine exhaust or secondhand cigarette smoke for six hours a day, seven days a week, just to compare the effects of the exposure on their lungs." Some R.J. Reynolds scientists “spread cigarette tar on the skin of more than 1,000 mice and rats and then forced them to breathe cigarette smoke. Many of the mice that had tar spread on their skin died during the study. Other mice had their skin peel off, and they developed skin tumors. All the surviving animals were killed and dissected.” And “at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, for instance, dozens of pregnant rhesus monkeys had tubes surgically implanted in order to subject them to a continuous flow of nicotine for the last four months of their pregnancies. A few days before full term, experimenters cut the fetuses out of the mothers and killed and dissected the preterm babies in order to determine the effects of nicotine exposure on their bodies.”

These are all very real things. Cigarette companies regularly test on animals, forcing them to go through pain, suffering, and, in all but a few cases, death.

All this could stop if the FDA would ban tobacco testing on animals. Support our quest for the end of this cruel practice!

Quotes from PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Picture slightly cropped from ydouthink.com