Will cigarettes with less nicotine really bring smoking down? Mark Collinson / Alamy Stock Photo

Tobacco firms could be forced to slash the amount of nicotine in US cigarettes, under radical plans from the Food and Drug Administration.

Proposals announced yesterday would see the amount of nicotine people get from most existing cigarettes cut by a third, from about 1.5 milligrams of nicotine down to between 0.3 to 0.5 milligrams per cigarette. It’s the nicotine in cigarettes that make them addictive, and according to one analysis, this change would cause 5 million people to quit smoking in the first …