Menthol smokers find it harder to kick the habit

New research shows that people who smoke menthol-flavored cigarettes are 9% less likely to quit successfully than people who smoke regular cigarettes, giving ammunition to the push for the Food and Drug Administration to ban menthol additives.

Black and Puerto Rican smokers of menthol cigarettes had an even harder time quitting, said a study released Aug. 15 by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Blacks who smoked menthols were 19% less likely to quit than blacks who smoked unflavored cigarettes. Puerto Rican menthol smokers had a 43% lower quit rate than their nonmenthol-smoking counterparts. The quit rates of other surveyed ethnic groups were about the same as the overall rate.
The findings are based on monthly U.S. Census Bureau surveys of more than 56,000 households between 2003 and 2007. Researchers examined responses of current and former smokers of regular and menthol cigarettes and looked at how many quit successfully, controlling for differences in education, socioeconomic status and other factors.

Although the overall differences in quit rates between menthol and nonmenthol cigarette smokers were not large, they were statistically significant and "suggest there is a robust menthol effect on cessation at the population level," the study said.

Previous research on the effect of menthol cigarettes on quit rates has been mixed, because studies looked at smaller slices of the population, such as patients at smoking-cessation clinics, said Cristine D. Delnevo, PhD, MPH, lead author of the new study. She said physicians should take note of the findings in helping patients who are trying to quit.