Ban on most cigarette flavors may have led to an overall decrease in smoking

The signing of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act in 2009 seems to have helped lead to a decline in the sale of non-menthol cigarettes, a new study finds. That law banned the sale of flavored cigarettes, with the exception of menthol, and the new study found that although consumption of non-menthol cigarettes had been declining since 2000, there was a 33% dip in the smoking of these cigarettes between 2009-2018. At the same time, menthol cigarette consumption only declined by around 8%, while the vast majority of the decline in cigarette consumption between 2009-2018 was attributed to decreased use of non-menthol products. Allowing the sale of menthol cigarettes may be stalling efforts to curb cigarette smoking, the authors suggest, adding that policies to ban these cigarettes should not be delayed.