Passage of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act in 2009 provides the FDA with regulatory authority to reduce the nicotine content of cigarettes if doing so will result in improved population health. Accumulating evidence suggests that reducing nicotine content in cigarettes reduces smoking behavior and toxicant exposure among adult daily, dependent smokers. However, such research leaves open the question of the effects of nicotine reduction on experimentation with cigarettes among adolescents and young adults at risk for progression to regular use and dependence. This is an important question since a nicotine content that reduces tobacco use and dependence among daily smokers could conceivably support continued experimentation and progression to dependence among non-daily smokers. The overarching goal of the proposed research is to evaluate reactions to, and choices to self-administer, cigarette smoke with varying nicotine content among low-frequency, non-dependent adolescent/young adult smokers between the ages of 18-25 yrs. The proposed sample (n=90) approximates the age and smoking patterns of individuals experimenting with cigarettes and as such, will provide critical information about the role of nicotine content in promoting and sustaining continued experimentation and progression to use. Participants will undergo three sessions in which their reactions to fixed doses of smoke from investigational cigarettes with three different nicotine contents (15.8 mg/gram of tobacco, 2.5 mg/g, and .4 mg/g). Following the third fixed-dose session, participants will return to the lab to choose one of the cigarettes to self-administer. Order of the fixed-dose sessions will be counterbalanced and randomly assigned; all tests will be conducted double-blind. We hypothesize that intermediate nicotine content cigarettes will produce greater positive reactions than very low nicotine content cigarettes and less negative reactions than normal nicotine content cigarettes. Participants will choose to self-administer intermediate content cigarettes over the others. The proposed research will provide an evaluation of the amount of nicotine in cigarette smoke that produces reactions associated with progression from initial smoking to nicotine dependence in a sample representative of individuals experimenting with cigarette use. Specifically, observing that a nicotine content level (2.4 mg/g) that reduces smoking among dependent, daily smokers, results in reactions and choices that are associated with progression to regular smoking and dependence, can have a significant impact in establishing new cigarette product standards.
The FDA, under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, has the authority to reduce the content of nicotine in cigarettes if appropriate for improving public health. However, very little evidence is available for understanding how reductions in cigarette nicotine content might affect smoking behavior among young, experimenting smokers. The proposed project will address this question by studying reactions to, and choices for, cigarettes with varying nicotine content among adolescents and young adults who smoke infrequently.
