"Menthol the bait to trap smokers, researchers say" by Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | July 17, 2008
Hoping to lure a new generation of smokers, tobacco companies routinely manipulate levels of menthol so that their cigarettes prove more appealing and less harsh to novice users, Boston researchers reported yesterday.
Scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health scoured thousands of pages of industry documents from the 1980s through 2006 and commissioned laboratory tests of cigarettes to confirm a long-suspected link between menthol levels and marketing strategies.
The researchers found that tobacco companies embrace a Goldilocks approach when launching brands: Add too little menthol, a chemical that has an effect akin to anesthesia, and tobacco retains its intense bite. Add too much, and first-time smokers are overwhelmed. Add just the right amount, and cigarettes become powerfully seductive.
Once hooked, the documents show, smokers require increasing levels of menthol to maintain the same cooling effect. Cigarette makers, in turn, respond with brands that contain more of the additive, the Harvard scientists said.
Representatives of large tobacco companies decried the study, with Lorillard Tobacco Co., maker of Newport and other menthol products, saying in a statement that the firm "does not control levels of menthol to promote smoking among adolescents and young adults."
A spokesman with the nation's largest cigarette maker,
The findings, published online by the American Journal of Public Health, arrive at a critical moment, as Congress is close to giving the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco.
What makes anyone think they are up to the job?
Seriously, they can't find the salmonella (which has disappeared from MSM coverage; see how it's done?), so what makes anyone think they are up to this?
Smoking - which is linked to cancer, heart disease, and other ailments - kills more than 400,000 Americans a year and is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.
R.J. Reynolds branded the study political propaganda, aimed at promoting a federal ban.
Trace amounts of menthol appear in most cigarettes, but it is a pivotal, heavily marketed ingredient in more than a quarter of cigarettes sold. The chemical activates cold receptors in the nose, throat, and lung, masking the harshness of tobacco and easing throat pain for beginning smokers.
The popularity of the product varies profoundly among age and racial groups. Earlier studies found that 70 percent of African-American smokers prefer menthols, and the Harvard researchers report that nearly 44 percent of adolescents who smoke choose menthols.
The menthol market historically was dominated by Lorillard, but Philip Morris has emerged as more of a force in recent years with its Marlboro Milds brand.
David Sylvia, a spokesman for Philip Morris, said executives have no interest in converting nonsmokers into cigarette users. But when the company spots a shift in preference among existing smokers, it pursues that market, much as a soft drink company might respond to demand for diet soda.
"As trends emerge among smokers, we look to develop products that can meet their taste preferences," Sylvia said. "Not everybody likes the same cigarette, just like not everybody likes the same kind of cola."
The Harvard researchers said that while low-menthol cigarettes appear to be marketed principally to younger smokers, products with higher levels are targeted at veteran smokers who want a greater boost of the mint-flavored additive.
By doing that, the tobacco companies "lock in lifelong customers," said Dr. Howard Koh, an author of the study and former Massachusetts public health commissioner.
Just the way they talk about this product of poison makes me want to puke.
Of course, we threaten trade sanctions on foreign countries that don't take the shit sticks, did you know that?
Once hooked, menthol smokers may find it harder to quit than other cigarette users, said Terry Pechacek, a specialist in smoking and its health consequences at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There is evidence, he said, that menthol intensifies the effect of nicotine, the primary addictive agent in cigarettes.
That's why some tobacco-control specialists argue fervently that menthol should be banned as part of the FDA rules pending before Congress, just as the rules have banned candy flavoring. The law as drafted, which is supported by Philip Morris and many medical groups, gives the FDA authority to regulate tobacco ingredients, including menthol, but does not mandate that it be removed from cigarettes.
In a letter last month, seven former federal health secretaries said the failure to ban menthol outright was proof that the regulations put the interests of tobacco companies ahead of protecting smokers, especially African-Americans.
Still, the Senate author of the measure, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, believes that the FDA ultimately would have "full authority to require the removal of potentially harmful ingredients," a spokeswoman said.
US Representative Edward Markey, a Malden Democrat and a supporter of the regulation, said that, as a result of the Harvard study, the FDA should scrutinize the use of menthol.
One of the nation's most prominent opponents of tobacco, Gregory Connolly of Harvard, who is an author of the study, said that menthol levels should be gradually reduced over several years. Otherwise, he said, chaos would ensue from long-time users being abruptly cut off.
Yeah, don't cut off the smokers cold-turkey!!
We don't need a bunch of withdrawing addicts running around.
Give' em their cigs!!!!
Heck, we are HAPPY to be shipping them to Iran!
Anyone find something disgusting and diabolical about that?
