Study authors said additional studies will examine whether it is better for smokers to reduce nicotine intake gradually or immediately and whether use of a transdermal nicotine patch in tandem with low-nicotine cigarettes further reduces cigarette use and dependence. By 1995, however, an internal memo from the US tobacco giant Philip Morris came to light in which employees called cigarettes “nicotine delivery systems” and acknowledged that nicotine was the “primary reason” smokers kept coming back.
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“Light” cigarettes failed to help because smokers would just puff harder and inhale more deeply, and wound up getting the same dose of nicotine as they would have in a normal cigarette, Donny and Hatsukami said.
“Reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes to very low levels may make it easier for people to quit smoking if they want to quit”, says study coauthor Jennifer Tidey, associate professor (research) of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University.
Smokers had to report daily how much they smoked and to make 10 office visits, a few of which included tests to measure nicotine exposure and dependence.
The findings “should serve as a catalyst” for the Food and Drug Administration to set limits on the nicotine content of smoked tobacco sold in the United States, Myers said. They have been paid as much as $835 for his or her participation.
Cigarettes sometimes have about 15.eight milligrams of nicotine per gram of tobacco. During week six, the average number of cigarettes smoked per day was lower for participants randomly assigned to cigarettes containing 2.4, 1.3, or 0.4 mg of nicotine per gram of tobacco than for participants randomly assigned to their usual brand or to cigarettes containing 15.8 mg per gram. That compares to 21 or 22 cigarettes for those given the 15.8-milligram cigarettes or their usual brand.
There was a correlation between the amount of nicotine and the number of cigarettes smoked.
A notable reduction in nicotine content in cigarettes appeared to significantly reduce smoking, nicotine exposure and nicotine dependence in adults who smoke, according to results of a randomized, double blind clinical trial.
Myers, of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said that the tobacco industry’s understanding of nicotine’s addictive power has been clear in its efforts to increase the doses that smokers get with their products.
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Dr. Michael Fiore and Timothy Baker, tobacco researchers from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, wrote in a commentary in the journal that the study shows the potential for a policy to cut nicotine that “could help to end the devastating health consequences” of smoking. The data also revealed that about 18% of all high school students reported using at least one flavored tobacco product in the past 30 days, while 5.8% said they only used nonflavored products.
