@article {Fongtobaccocontrol-2021-057227, author = {Geoffrey T Fong and Janet Chung-Hall and Gang Meng and Lorraine V Craig and Mary E Thompson and Anne C K Quah and K Michael Cummings and Andrew Hyland and Richard J O{\textquoteright}Connor and David T Levy and Cristine D Delnevo and Ollie Ganz and Thomas Eissenberg and Eric K Soule and Robert Schwartz and Joanna E Cohen and Michael O Chaiton}, title = {Impact of Canada{\textquoteright}s menthol cigarette ban on quitting among menthol smokers: pooled analysis of pre{\textendash}post evaluation from the ITC Project and the Ontario Menthol Ban Study and projections of impact in the USA}, elocation-id = {tobaccocontrol-2021-057227}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2021-057227}, publisher = {BMJ Publishing Group Ltd}, abstract = {Introduction Between 2015 and 2018, Canada banned menthol cigarettes. This study pooled data from two pre{\textendash}post cohort studies (the Ontario Menthol Ban Study, and the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation (ITC) Canada Survey, conducted in seven provinces) to derive more precise estimates of the impact of Canada{\textquoteright}s menthol ban on quitting and to apply these estimates to project the impact of a menthol ban in the USA.Methods Weighted multivariable logistic analyses compared post-ban quit success of menthol smokers with non-menthol smokers (for daily smokers and for all (daily + non-daily) smokers), controlling for sex, age, ethnicity, education, baseline smoking status, baseline cigarettes per day and study regions. Projections to the USA were created by multiplying the effect size of the Canadian menthol ban on quitting (percentage of increased quitting among menthol smokers) by the number of menthol smokers overall and among African Americans, from the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.Results After the menthol cigarette ban, menthol smokers were more likely than non-menthol smokers to have quit smoking among daily smokers (difference=8.0\%; 95\% CI: 2.4\% to 13.7\%,p=0.005) and all (daily+non-daily) smokers (difference=7.3\%; 95\% CI: 2.1\% to 12.5\%,p=0.006). The projected number of smokers who would quit after a US menthol ban would be 789 724 daily smokers (including 199 732 African Americans) and 1 337 988 daily+non-daily smokers (including 381 272 African Americans).Conclusions This pooled analysis of Canada{\textquoteright}s menthol cigarette ban provides the foundation for estimating the impact of menthol bans in the USA and other countries. Projections suggest that a US menthol cigarette ban would have a substantial impact on increasing quitting.Data are available upon reasonable request. Data are available upon reasonable request. In each country participating in the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation (ITC) Project, the data are jointly owned by the lead researcher(s) in that country and the ITC Project at the University of Waterloo. Data from the ITC Project are available to approved researchers 2 years after the date of issuance of cleaned data sets by the ITC Data Management Centre. Researchers interested in using ITC data are required to apply for approval by submitting an International Tobacco Control Data Repository (ITCDR) request application and subsequently to sign an ITCDR Data Usage Agreement. The criteria for data usage approval and the contents of the Data Usage Agreement are described online (http://www.itcproject.org).}, issn = {0964-4563}, URL = {https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2022/04/27/tobaccocontrol-2021-057227}, eprint = {https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2022/04/27/tobaccocontrol-2021-057227.full.pdf}, journal = {Tobacco Control} }