Tobacco News

The one cigarette flavoring that federal law hasn’t banned outright — menthol — may not have an effect on health, on whether kids start smoking or on quitting, a key federal regulatory panel was told yesterday.

Or maybe it might, since many of the studies reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee didn’t ask quite the questions the group wanted answered, and others produced contradictory results.

The panel, which is supposed to recommend how menthol cigarettes are regulated by next year, kicked off its first two-day session yesterday in Washington, and on the Web, with presentations by FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff members about who smokes menthol cigarettes and menthol’s impact on health.

Some of the answers were clear enough: About 18 million adults and 1 million teenagers smoke menthols — not quite one-third of adult smokers and half of teenage smokers. Roughly 80 percent of African-American smokers smoke menthols.

But panel member Melanie Wakefield, director of Australia’s Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer, said the presentations had little information on whether menthol cigarettes make it easier for teenagers to start smoking.

FDA staff member Allison Hoffman told the committee that menthol may mask early symptoms of smoking-related disease, so that people continue using tobacco longer and delay seeking treatment for illnesses. But she said the common perception that menthol eases respiratory problems wasn’t a real effect.

Hoffman said studies of the difference between menthol and ordinary cigarettes on cardiovascular health were inconclusive, as were most studies on cancer — except for what she described as subjective interpretation of a small number of studies that looked at the interaction of menthol cigarette smoking, gender and race.

She said menthol smoke did not appear to be more toxic for cells than ordinary tobacco smoke.

FDA presenter Joshua Rising said he had found little information on whether smokers switch to menthol cigarettes instead of quitting, even though panel members said that seemed to be a key question.

Separately, American Council on Science and Health President Elizabeth M. Whelan said yesterday that when the staff of her nonprofit anti-smoking group was preparing its submission to the FDA, “we were very surprised to learn most of the popular wisdom that menthol somehow increases the danger that smoking poses to public health or entices young people to begin smoking is basically unfounded.”

But other tobacco-control advocates criticized the FDA’s approach on menthol.

“It’s just an exercise in political correctness,” said tobacco-control advocate Alan Blum, director of the University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society.

“There’s an elephant in the room and no one’s talking about it,” he said. “Congress said you can’t ban cigarettes; so now what are you gonna do?”

Blum also has criticized the committee chairman, Jonathan Samet, saying he received funding from the tobacco industry-supported Center for Indoor Air Research in the 1980s.

Cigarette companies, with the exception of Richmond-based Philip Morris USA, had fiercely opposed FDA regulation.

The company is slated to present its own views today on menthol, likely to echo other tobacco industry comments that there is no evidence that menthol has health effects.

Yesterday, Lorillard Tobacco Co. Senior Vice President Bill True said the FDA committee faces a major challenge being objective, adding: “The science is clear and compelling that there is no differing health risk between menthol and nonmenthol products.”

By David Ress, Timesdispatch