Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 14, 1994 TAG: 9407140097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
According to the plan published in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the Food and Drug Administration - which is considering the regulation of cigarettes as drugs - would require cigarette manufacturers to ratchet back the amount of nicotine in cigarettes over ``perhaps 10 or 15 years'' to reach a target dose of 0.17 milligrams of nicotine per cigarette. That is about one-sixth of the average of today's cigarettes, which typically deliver an average of 1 mg of nicotine each.
The researchers, Neal L. Benowitz of the University of California at San Francisco and Jack E. Henningfield of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, concluded that ``The measures described in this proposal may seem drastic to some. However, the problem of one quarter of a billion premature deaths caused by tobacco use in developed countries calls for drastic action.''
The researchers based their proposal in part on the people they called cigarette ``chippers,'' the 10 percent of smokers who consume fewer than five cigarettes a day and generally don't appear to be addicted. Benowitz and Henningfield calculated the average amount of nicotine in these non-addicted smokers' bodies and then determined how much nicotine could be allowed in each cigarette to maintain similar levels among those who smoke 30 cigarettes a day.: ``When they came of age and came of sense, they could make their choice made on taste, and not based on addiction.''
The FDA first announced it was considering tobacco regulation in February; and Commissioner David A. Kessler has said that regulation might take the form of a gradual lessening of nicotine levels. An FDA advisory panel will hold a three-day hearing beginning Aug. 1 in Silver Spring, Md., to discuss nicotine addiction and dosage.
by CNB