Big Tobacco Lures Young Smokers With Menthol Cigarettes: Study

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Connolly and his colleagues looked at internal tobacco-industry documents which showed that companies researched how menthol levels could affect sales among different demographic groups. Cigarettes with milder menthol levels appeal to younger smokers.

Then they measured menthol levels in mentholated cigarettes, which proliferated after the signing of the Master Settlement Agreement in 1998, the historic settlement between tobacco companies and 46 U.S. states. Newport had the lowest levels of menthol, while traditional Kool cigarettes the highest, the researchers said.

Last, they looked at an existing survey of smoking in the general U.S. population.

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"We found that, once again, menthol was the predominant brand smoked by African-American teens, and they smoked it at higher rates than older African-Americans," said Connolly, who is professor of the practice of public health and director of the Tobacco Control Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Surprisingly, we found that Caucasian teens smoked menthol at higher rates than expected, indicating that hip-hop was moving into the suburbs."

The deliberate manipulation of menthol levels was accompanied by more focused advertising of mentholated cigarettes (advertising for non-mentholated brands fell) and the introduction of new brands such as Marlboro Milds in 2000, the researchers said.

"The product itself stands outside the law, and industry is exploiting that, tailoring their brands to specific groups and integrating that with what marketing they have left and, unfortunately, they're being successful," Connolly said. "The outcome should be regulation of menthol by the FDA. It's the one hole."

The study authors also argued that this industry practice is a violation of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), which prohibits companies from marketing directly or indirectly to youths.

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