The study provides further evidence of the positive impact of banning menthol cigarettes on public health

According to a new study A European ban on menthol cigarettes by 2020 will make menthol smokers more likely to quit smoking, which supports previous Canadian studies of the positive impact of banning menthol cigarettes on public health.

Christina Kyriakos from Imperial College London led the study in collaboration with researchers from Maastricht University and the Trimbos Institute in the Netherlands and the International Tobacco Policy Review Project (ITC Project) at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

This Dutch study is our second large national study to provide evidence of the powerful effects of menthol on smoking cessation, supporting proposed menthol bans in the US and other countries.

Jeffrey T. Fong, professor of psychology and public health sciences at Waterloo and principal investigator of the ITC project.

The research team surveyed a national sample of adults who smoked menthol and non-menthol cigarettes in the Netherlands before and after the EU menthol ban. Among menthol smokers before and after the ban, 26.1 percent quit smoking. This quit rate was higher than the control group of non-menthol smokers, of whom only 14.1 percent quit.

An ITC study of menthol bans implemented across Canada in 2018 found a 12 percent higher quit rate among menthol smokers after the European ban.

For decades, tobacco companies have added menthol to cigarettes because it creates a cooling sensation that reduces the intensity of the smoke. It makes it easier to start smoking, which causes young non-smokers to grow into regular smoking and become addicted to nicotine.

For more than a decade, the World Health Organization and many other public health authorities have called on governments to ban menthol in cigarettes in an effort to reduce smoking among the 7.1 million smokers and 1.2 million nonsmokers worldwide. The Global Agreement on Tobacco Control, the WHO’s Convention on Tobacco Control, requires countries to ban or limit menthol and other additives that make smoking easier.

So far, 35 countries have banned menthol cigarettes. In the year On April 28, 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration announced proposed legislation to ban menthol in cigarettes and e-cigarettes. An ITC study published the same day predicted the impact of the Canadian ban on menthol cigarettes in the U.S. would result in more than 1.3 million smokers quitting.

A Dutch study found that one-third of menthol smokers continued to smoke menthol cigarettes even after the ban was lifted. The tobacco industry markets a variety of additives to allow people to add menthol flavoring to tobacco products themselves.

“These actions of the tobacco industry undermine the effectiveness of the menthol ban. By tightening the rules to include these menthol additives, the impact of the menthol ban on quitting could be greater,” said Dutch study co-author Mark Willemsen. and Professor of Tobacco Control Research at Maastricht University and Scientific Director of Tobacco Control at the Trimbos Institute.

The study, Impact of EU menthol on smoking cessation outcomes: Longitudinal findings from the 2020–2021 ITC Netherlands Survey, appears in the journal Tobacco control.