Tobacco industry tactics in preparing for menthol ban

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number F3667. The US Food and Drug Administration concluded that a ban on menthol cigarettes would likely elicit a reduction in cigarette consumption, increased cessation and reduced initiation of smoking.1 Understanding how the tobacco industry prepared for a menthol ban in Ontario, Canada—a province with some 2 million smokers—can be useful to jurisdictions preparing similar bans. One previous menthol ban study2 found menthol replacement packs with the word ‘menthol’ replacing the word ‘green’ and with cellophane wrappers with the wording ‘smooth taste (redesigned) without menthol’. Ontario’s ban on the sale of menthol cigarettes, first announced in May 2015, took effect on 1 January 2017. As the first phase of a pre–post ban study that aims to understand changes in cigarette packaging and product in response to the menthol …