In a major blow to the tobacco industry, the US government is looking to cut nicotine in all cigarettes sold to minimally or nonaddictive levels, the Wall Street Journal has reported citing officials familiar with the move.
However, the move, which is expected to be announced next week, won’t likely take effect for several years, as there are a number of hurdles that need to be passed, the newspaper reported.
The Food and Drug Administration first must need to outline the proposed rule and then invite public comments before publishing a final order.
Moreover, the Tobacco companies would most likely take legal recourse, further delaying the policy’s implementation.
The US government had been looking to push ahead with the policy as part of President Biden's Cancer Moonshot initiative which hopes to reduce deaths from cancer by at least 50 per cent over the next 25 years.
The move is being hailed as the biggest step taken by the government to curb smoking since 1998 when tobacco companies paid more than $200 billion to help states pay for healthcare.
Nicotine is an addictive chemical found in cigarettes and other tobacco products. While nicotine hooks people on cigarettes, nicotine itself doesn’t cause cancer, heart disease or lung disease, according to the FDA. It is other harmful compounds in cigarette smoke that are associated with more than 480,000 deaths in the US each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lowering nicotine levels in cigarettes has been a hotly debated topic at the FDA since the 1990s.
There are various ways to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes. Manufacturers can adjust the blend of tobacco leaves or use different types of paper or filters.
Nicotine can also be cut down from the leaf during the manufacturing process. One company uses genetic engineering to grow tobacco with 95 per cent less nicotine than a typical tobacco plant, the newspaper reports.
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