Tobacco companies explicitly marketed cigarettes with the synthetic cooling agent WS-3 as replacements for menthol cigarettes. Sales data from NielsenIQ's Pacific division suggest that California's menthol cigarette prohibition may have reduced sales of menthol cigarettes and spurred the introduction of cigarettes with WS-3 into the marketplace. The findings suggest that sales of cigarettes with WS-3 did not fully offset the decrease in menthol cigarette sales.
Pepper et al. (Sat,) studied this question.