Abstract
Background: A mandated reduction in the nicotine content of cigarettes could reduce smoking rate and prevalence. However, one concern is that smokers may compensate by increasing the intensity with which they smoke each cigarette to obtain more nicotine. This study assessed whether smokers engage in compensatory smoking by estimating the mouth-level nicotine intake of low nicotine cigarettes smoked during a clinical trial. Methods: Smokers were randomly assigned to receive cigarettes with one of five nicotine contents for 6 weeks. An additional group received a cigarette with the lowest nicotine content, but an increased tar yield. The obtained mouth-level nicotine intake from discarded cigarette butts for a subset of participants (51-70/ group) was estimated using solanesol as described previously. A compensation index was calculated for each group to estimate the proportion of nicotine per cigarette recovered through changes in smoking intensity. Results: There was no significant increase in smoking intensity for any of the reduced nicotine cigarettes as measured by the compensation index (an estimated 0.4% of the nicotine lost was recovered in the lowest nicotine group; 95% confidence interval, -0.1 to 1.2). There was a significant decrease in smoking intensity for very low nicotine content cigarettes with increased tar yield. Conclusions: Reductions in nicotine content did not result in compensatory changes in how intensively participants smoked research cigarettes. Impact: Combined with data from clinical trials showing a reduction in cigarettes smoked per day, these data suggest that a reduction in nicotine content is unlikely to result in increased smoke exposure.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 643-649 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors would like to thank all the co-investigators, students, fellows, staff, and participants involved in the Center for the Evaluation of Nicotine in Cigarettes. The research reported in this article was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Food and Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products (U54DA031659). Research was also supported by the NCI (P30CA77598) utilizing the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core shared resource of the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, and by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the NIH (UL1TR002494). Salary support during the preparation of this article was provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (U54DA031659, U54DA036114, and K01DA047433). The discarded filter analysis work was supported by funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an operating division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Use of trade names is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Public Health Service, or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Association for Cancer Research.