Oklahoma researcher speaks out on proposed ban on menthol

Oklahoma City – The federal health authorities have indicated that menthol cigarettes may be counted, but no one really knows what smokers will do if their favorite brand is removed from the market.

Ted Wagener, director of regulatory science at Oklahoma's Center for Tobacco Research, hopes to be able to shed light on this point soon. With other researchers, he brings smokers into their labs to compare their ranking of menthol cigarettes and alternatives, such as flavored "little cigars" – essentially cigarettes with different packaging.

If smokers love cigars as much as cigarettes, it means that simply banning menthol in cigarettes will not do much good because users will just switch to an equally harmful product, said Wagener.

"You're just going to change what smokers use," he said.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, announced Thursday that the agency would seek to create rules banning menthol in cigarettes and cigars. He also announced that the FDA would ban the sale of electronic cigarettes with flavors other than tobacco, mint and menthol in places such as convenience stores. People aged 18 and over can still buy the full range of flavors at vape specialty stores.

Both measures aim to reduce the number of young people who become addicted to nicotine, while encouraging adults to switch from traditional smoking to e-cigarettes, or to quit altogether, Gottlieb said.

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

Prohibiting menthol cigarettes and making it more difficult to acquire sweet electronic cigarette flavors will likely deter teens from becoming regular smokers, Wagener said, but it is not clear that this will help people already addicted. Adult cigarette smokers will likely switch to tasteless cigarettes, he said.