The Food and Drug Administration should make use of its powers to regulate cigarette design by imposing stricter controls “up to and including a ban” on perforated cigarette filters, according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Citing findings in the 2014 Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health that changed cigarette designs have caused an increase in adenocarcinomas (a common form of lung cancer), researchers at Ohio State said filter ventilation is not beneficial to smokers. “The smoke from cigarettes with ventilated filters provides false perceptions to the smoker of reduced harmfulness,” the article says. “Filter ventilation affects how the tobacco burns, smoking behaviour, and how the lung is exposed to carcinogens, so that it plausibly contributes to the increased adenocarcinomas by a cigarette that the smoker falsely believes is less harmful.”