Study to look at effects of possible menthol ban

Federal health officials have signaled the days of menthol cigarettes may be numbered, but no one’s quite sure what smokers will do if their favorite brand goes off the market.

Ted Wagener, director of regulatory science at the Oklahoma Tobacco Research Center, hopes to be able to shed some light on that soon. He and other researchers are bringing smokers into their labs to compare how they rate menthol cigarettes and replacement products, like flavored “little cigars” — essentially cigarettes with a different wrapping.

If the smokers like the little cigars as much as the cigarettes, it’s a sign that just banning menthol in cigarettes alone won’t do much good, because users will just switch to an equally harmful product, Wagener said.

“You’re just going to shift what smokers use,” he said.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, announced Thursday the agency will seek to create rules banning menthol in cigarettes and cigars. He also announced the FDA would forbid the sale of e-cigarettes with flavors other than tobacco, mint and menthol in locations such as convenience stores. People who are 18 or older could still buy the full range of flavors in specialized vape shops.

Both measures are designed to reduce the number of youth becoming addicted to nicotine, while encouraging adults to switch from traditional smoking to e-cigarettes, or to quit altogether, Gottlieb said.

More than half of underage smokers use cigarettes with menthol, compared to about 39 percent of all smokers, Wagener said. Menthol reduces irritation in the throat and doesn’t have the unpleasant smell of tobacco. However, it makes cigarettes more addictive because it slows the way the body processes nicotine, he said.

Banning menthol cigarettes and making it harder to get sweet e-cigarette flavors likely will discourage teens from becoming regular smokers, Wagener said, but it’s not clear that will help people who already are addicted. Adult cigarette smokers likely will switch to unflavored cigarettes, he said.

“Flavors kind of bring them into it, but the nicotine will keep them there,” he said.