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Original research
Effects of menthol use and transitions in use on short-term and long-term cessation from cigarettes among US smokers
  1. Eric C Leas1,
  2. Tarik Benmarhnia1,2,
  3. David R Strong1,
  4. John P Pierce1
  1. 1 Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA
  2. 2 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Eric C Leas, Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA; ecleas{at}ucsd.edu

Abstract

Objectives To estimate the effect of menthol use and transitions in use (switching to or from menthol) on short-term and long-term cessation from cigarette smoking and whether this differed across demographic groups (age, sex, race).

Methods We compared the probability of 30+ day and 12-month abstinence from cigarette smoking by menthol use status using two cohorts of US adult cigarette smokers who attempted to quit smoking in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (wave 1 to wave 3 and wave 2 to wave 4; n=5759), inverse probability of treatment weighting and adjusted risk ratios (aRRs).

Results Using menthol (vs non-menthol) prior to a quit attempt decreased the probability of 30+ day abstinence by 28% (aRR=0.78; 95% CI 0.67 to 0.91) and the probability of 12-month abstinence by 53% (aRR=0.65; 95% CI 0.47 to 0.88). Additionally, switching from menthol (vs maintaining menthol use) increased the probability of 30+ day abstinence by 58% (aRR=1.58; 95% CI 1.00 to 2.50) and the probability of 12-month abstinence by 97% (aRR=1.86; 95% CI 0.92 to 3.74). Switching to menthol (vs maintaining non-menthol use) was associated with a lower probability of 30+ day (aRR=0.70; 95% CI 0.42 to 1.16) and 12-month abstinence (aRR=0.64; 95% CI 0.30 to 1.36), but these associations were imprecise. The effects of menthol use on impaired quitting were slightly larger for non-Hispanic Black smokers, but not different for other demographic groups.

Conclusion These results demonstrate that menthol impaired menthol smokers’ attempts to quit smoking but switching from menthol improved success. This suggests that removing menthol may improve menthol smokers’ success during quit attempts.

  • cessation
  • disparities
  • addiction

Data availability statement

Data are available in a public, open-access repository, the National Addiction and HIV Data Archive: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/NAHDAP/studies/36498.

https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2021-056596

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    Data availability statement

    Data are available in a public, open-access repository, the National Addiction and HIV Data Archive: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/NAHDAP/studies/36498.

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors ECL: conceptualisation, software, methodology, formal analysis, visualisation, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. ECL, TB: data curation. All authors: validation, investigation, resources, writing–original draft preparation, writing–review and editing.

    • Funding This work was funded by grant 1R21DA051356-01 from the National Institutes of Drug Abuse.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.