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A Menthol Cigarette Ban May Influence Smokers to Quit
By, Cheryl Platzman Weinstock, www.Reuters.com
(Reuters Health) - One month after Ontario fully banned menthol in cigarettes, twice as many menthol smokers attempted to quit compared to how many had predicted they would do so in the months leading up to the ban, according to a small study in the Canadian province.
Of 325 menthol cigarette smokers interviewed before and after the ban went into effect on January 1, 2017, 29 percent had tried to quit by the February 1 survey whereas only 14.5 percent thought they would do so when asked in late 2016.
“We would actually expect the impact of this study to be even greater in the U.S. given the higher use and regularity of (menthol cigarette) use,” lead author Michael Chaiton of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto said in an email.
He added that there was little controversy in Canada over this ban, which meant that the level of awareness of it was low.
“What this showed is that getting menthol out of cigarettes is not only possible, but it has a way bigger health benefit than anyone thought it would,” Stanton Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco and coauthor of an accompanying commentary in JAMA Internal Medicine said in a phone interview.
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