Conventional wisdom says reduce nicotine in cigarettes and smokers will smoke more. A study showed exactly the opposite. So should the FDA cap nicotine content?

Give smokers cigarettes with dramatically lower nicotine content, and they will smoke less, not more.

Those are the surprising findings of a six-week study of more than 800 smokers, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study participants’ behavior defied the conventional wisdom that reducing nicotine will just lead addicts to smoke more.

That’s what happened with light cigarettes, which deliver less tar and nicotine per puff. Tobacco companies marketed them as a healthier alternative, but public health researchers found that smokers of light brands just inhaled more deeply to get the same dose of nicotine.

But the cigarettes in the study made it impossible for the smokers to get their usual dose of nicotine, so their smoking habit was not reinforced with a chemical reward. Some of the study cigarettes contained only about one-sixteenth of the nicotine found in a standard cigarette.

“People seem perfectly content to smoke these lower-nicotine cigarettes, not only perfectly content, but it appeared that because they got less satisfaction, they were more interested in quitting,” said Dr. Norman Edelman, a senior scientific advisor for the American Lung Association. Edelman was not involved with the study.

Eric Donny, Ph.D., a University of Pittsburgh psychologist who specializes in addiction, led the study. He explained why smokers likely responded differently to low-nicotine cigarettes than they do to light cigarettes.

“If you gave [smokers] half the nicotine, they might try to smoke twice the cigarettes. In other words, they still can change their behavior enough,” he said.

“If you reduce the nicotine by 90 percent, then it becomes difficult or impossible for them to maintain their smoking habits,” Donny continued. “What happens is that they don’t try to compensate. They end up smoking less.”

Some participants cheated, Donny acknowledged, perhaps picking up a pack at the corner store.

But participants had significantly less nicotine in their systems at the end of the study and the amount of carbon monoxide in their systems confirmed that they were not smoking more.

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