My stepdad was a pulmonologist and told me the filters make it worse. Makes sense, they only allow the smaller particles through, which penetrate deeper into your lung tissue. The filters are also synthetic and the filter fibers can penetrate lung tissue as well. I’m not a cigarette smoker but from the cigarettes I have smoked in my life with and without filters, I could definitely see filtered cigarettes being worse. The tar that they are filtering out could actually be less harmful to inhale than inhaling finely filtered smoke, especially because filtered cigarettes allow you to take bigger, deeper hits.