Unfiltered Cigarettes: Information, Popular Brands, and More

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An unfiltered cigarette is a cigarette with no filter tip: paper, tobacco and nothing else at the mouth end. They were the only kind of cigarette until the 1950s, they are now a small niche, and four national brands plus a handful of discount lines still sell one. This page covers what a filter is, how unfiltered cigarettes went from the whole market to a corner of it, which unfiltered cigarettes are sold in the US today, and what the research says about filters and risk.

Last verified September 11, 2026. Sources at the end.

What a filter is

A cigarette filter is a plug of cellulose acetate fiber, the same material as photographic film base, bonded with a plasticizer called triacetin and wrapped in tipping paper. Some filters add a layer of activated charcoal. Since the 1970s most filters have also had rows of tiny ventilation holes laser-cut into the tipping paper, which dilute the smoke with air as it is drawn through. An unfiltered cigarette has none of that; it is a paper tube of tobacco, usually king size (about 85 mm), and the smoker draws directly on the tobacco.

How filters took over

The first filter patents date to the 1920s, and Molins in Britain built filter-tipping machinery in the 1930s, but filtered cigarettes were a specialty item for decades. In 1950 they were half a percent of US production. That changed in the early 1950s, when the first large studies linking smoking to lung cancer were published and the industry responded with filters as a reassurance. Lorillard’s Kent launched in 1952 with a “Micronite” filter that, from 1952 to 1956, was made partly of crocidolite asbestos before the company switched to cellulose acetate. R.J. Reynolds launched Winston in 1954 as a filtered brand and it became the second best-selling cigarette in the country within a few years. By 1975 filtered cigarettes were 87.7% of US production, and the unfiltered brands that had defined the market, Camel, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Chesterfield, either added filtered versions or shrank.

Unfiltered cigarettes sold in the US today

State tobacco directories, which list every cigarette style a manufacturer has certified for sale, show the following unfiltered products as of 2026. All are king size, 20 to a pack.

Product	Manufacturer	Pack
Camel Regular Non-Filter	R.J. Reynolds	Soft pack
Lucky Strike Non-Filter	R.J. Reynolds	Soft pack
Pall Mall Classic Non-Filter	R.J. Reynolds	Soft pack
Natural American Spirit Non-Filter (Brown Box)	Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. (Reynolds)	Box
Doral Non-Filter	R.J. Reynolds	Box
Sonoma Non-Filter	ITG Brands	Soft pack
Grand Prix, Liggett Select and Eagle 20’s Non-Filter	Liggett Group	Box
Echo and Edgefield Non-Filter	Xcaliber International	Box
DTC Non-Filter	Dosal Tobacco	Box
Baron Non-Filter	Farmers Tobacco Co.	Soft pack

Camel’s unfiltered pack is the original 1913 product and is the one most people mean by “Camel straights.” Lucky Strike’s unfiltered cigarette was, for a period ending in December 2020, the only Lucky Strike sold in the US at all; Reynolds reintroduced filtered styles that year. Pall Mall’s unfiltered king, introduced in 1939 as the first king-size cigarette, is the last survivor of the brand’s premium era; the rest of the Pall Mall line is now a discount brand. Chesterfield, once the other big unfiltered name, is no longer listed in any state directory we checked. The remaining entries are discount and deep-discount brands sold mainly in the South and Midwest. Availability of any of them depends on your state and your retailer.

What the research says about filters

Filters do not make cigarettes safer, and the absence of one does not change that. The National Cancer Institute’s Monograph 13, published in 2001, reviewed the evidence on filtered and low-yield cigarettes and found that filters are ineffective at removing the low-molecular-weight gases in smoke, including carbon monoxide, and that when a person rather than a machine smokes the cigarette, the compounds reach the lungs regardless. The same review found that smokers of filtered cigarettes compensate by drawing harder and blocking the ventilation holes with their lips or fingers, which is why the “light” and “low tar” ratings based on machine smoking were withdrawn and the descriptors were banned from packs in 2010. Later research has associated ventilated filters with the rise in adenocarcinoma, the lung cancer type now most common in smokers, because the diluted smoke is inhaled more deeply.

The practical differences between filtered and unfiltered cigarettes are physical: an unfiltered cigarette contains a little more tobacco for its length because none of it is filter, delivers undiluted smoke, and leaves loose tobacco on the lip. None of those is a health difference in either direction.

Sources

• National Cancer Institute, “Light” Cigarettes and Cancer Risk (summarizing NCI Monograph 13)
• Oregon Department of Justice, Oregon Tobacco Directory, updated July 21, 2026; California Attorney General, California Tobacco Directory
• R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, What we make
• 21 U.S.C. 387k, descriptor restrictions
• Longo et al., “Crocidolite asbestos fibers in smoke from original Kent cigarettes,” Cancer Research, 1995