Many regulations worldwide require the reporting of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide (TNCO) and set limits on their yields measured following the ISO smoking regime (ISO3308, 2012). The intention of FCTC Art. 9 is to characterise and monitor cigarettes, and in the USA, the FDA has to make testing data publicly available in an understandable, non-misleading way. The introduction or recommendation for an additional more intense smoking regime with filter ventilation blocked has been made within this regulatory context. However, this raises a number of analytical issues and does not make the data less misleading. On the basis of a cigarette burning model presented previously (TSRC 2012), investigations were conducted on 10 products with different designs in order to understand the burning process when different machine smoking regimes were applied. The relationship between yields and the difference between smouldering and smoking time, with filter ventilation open or blocked, is described by a straight line passing through the origin for all designs tested. These studies showed that a single smoking regime would fit with the FCTC Art. 9 and FDA purposes. The reporting of i) ISO TNCO yields with puff numbers, ii) filter ventilation and iii) cigarette dimensions, characterizes the products as well as data from two smoking regimes, and it provides valuable data for cigarette monitoring. In addition, the association of the burning time derived from the number of puffs with the yields would be appropriate to communicate understandable and not misleading data.