Some intense smoking regimes prescribe that the ventilation holes in the tipping paper should be fully or partially blocked, which reduces the effectiveness of the perforation in the tipping paper for controlling the smoke yields. Consequently, under these intense regimes the cigarette paper becomes more important as a design tool. This study investigates whether the effectiveness of the cigarette paper as a design tool is influenced by the smoking regime and especially by the blocking of the ventilation holes. To this end cigarettes were produced from cigarette papers with varying air permeability and citrate content. These cigarettes were smoked under the ISO regime, the Massachusetts regime (45/2/30) and the Canadian regime (55/2/30) without blocking of ventilation. The measured smoke yields were compared with results from a numerical simulation and a good agreement (R2>0.98) was found. The simulations were then extended to 50% and 100% blocking of ventilation holes. The results show that the air permeability of the cigarette paper remains an effective tool to control NFDPM yields, while nicotine and CO react about 15% less sensitively on changes of the air permeability. The effectiveness of the citrate level is higher for all smoke yields when switching from ISO to intense smoking regimes, the effect is especially pronounced for tar. When ventilation holes are blocked, the smoke yields react much stronger on changes in the air permeability of the cigarette paper for all smoking regimes, which is plausible from simple considerations of the flow in the cigarette. In contrast, the effectiveness of citrate level modifications does not depend on the blocking of ventilation holes.In conclusion the cigarette paper remains an effective tool to influence smoke yields, but adjusting CO levels to meet regulations may become more difficult under intense smoking regimes.