Two Studies That TPSAC Should Review in Detail
In an attempt to disgorge the CRE conclusion that existing studies demonstrate that menthol has no impact on smoking initiation/cessation, proponents of a menthol ban are in a rush to publicize studies to the contrary, however meritorious.
Examples include the eleven reviews of the literature commissioned by the FDA, the midnight publication of a special edition of Addiction as well as the recent barrage of studies submitted to TPSAC by TPSAC members and the FDA and so posted as meeting materials for its January 10 and 11 meetings.
Remarkably absent from these data submissions are two studies which concluded that menthol does not have an impact on smoking initiation/cessation.
One such study is a result of in-depth cross-sectional analyses of nearly 20,000 smokers, performed by Muscat et al. which concluded:
— Cigarette mentholation was not associated with continued smoking
— The findings suggest that menthol does not increase the addictive properties of tobacco nicotine.
The other study conducted by Hyland et al. concluded:
— Despite the biologic mechanism that suggests that menthol may facilitate greater nicotine transfer to the smoker, these data indicate that mentholated cigarette smokers do not exhibit greater signs of nicotine dependence as measured by the likelihood of future cessation, time to first cigarette in the morning, or number of cigarettes smoked per day.
Both of the aforementioned studies are appended below.
In its forthcoming January 10 statement to TPSAC, CRE will identify the missing component in the TPSAC review of menthol.
