Center for Tobacco Products News

By Molly Peterson

March 31 (Bloomberg) — Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked tobacco companies to provide data on how they make and market menthol cigarettes, a step toward helping the agency decide whether to ban them.

The FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee requested the information today after saying decades’ worth of data is mixed on whether the minty flavor lures young people to start smoking or makes it hard to quit. Cigarette makers led by Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA should present marketing data when the committee meets again within the next six months, panelists said.

A law signed by President Barack Obama last June gave the FDA unprecedented power to restrict the marketing of tobacco products to youths and banned companies from adding flavors such as clove or strawberry to cigarettes. The law allowed menthol, the most popular flavored cigarettes, to stay on the market unless the FDA determines they’re more of a health risk than regular cigarettes.

“I think we have to know, is menthol essential to smoking?” Gregory Connolly, a panel member and a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said at the meeting. “Why is menthol used? What are the types of menthol we’re talking about? How is it delivered? Is it delivered in the paper, in the wrapper, in the filter?”

Marketing Strategies

The 12-member panel must send a report to the FDA within a year on the health risks of menthol cigarettes, and the agency must decide by March 2012 whether to ban them. The committee’s questions for companies include whether they promote menthol to potential first-time smokers. The panel also wants data on any marketing strategies that target consumers by race, gender or age, and the amount of menthol in each cigarette brand.

Exempting menthol from the flavored-tobacco ban was part of a 2008 compromise by lawmakers that led Altria to back the legislation. It also set off a racially charged debate as seven former U.S. health secretaries said that the exemption poses a health risk for black smokers, a majority of whom prefer menthol.

Menthol cigarettes comprise 20 percent of the U.S. market, according to Federal Trade Commission data. They are used by more than 80 percent of black smokers, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said in a 2007 report.

Industry Representative

About 70 percent of smokers choose regular cigarettes instead of menthol, said Daniel Heck, principal scientist at Lorillard Tobacco Co., the third-biggest U.S. cigarette maker, after Altria and Reynolds American Inc.’s RJ Reynolds Tobacco. Heck is among three non-voting advisory-panel members who represent the industry.

“I think a blanket assertion that menthol is invariably more appealing to one group or another has to be examined carefully,” Heck said at today’s meeting.

Lorillard, based in Greensboro, North Carolina, makes Newport, the top-selling menthol cigarette in the U.S. Newport generated 92 percent of the company’s $5.23 billion in revenue last year, Lorillard said last month in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Scientific studies show that “there is no effect of menthol on smoking-related health risks,” James Dillard, a senior vice president at Richmond, Virginia-based Altria, told the committee during a public comment period. Public health advocates disagreed.

“We absolutely need to broaden our definition of harm,” said Pamela Clark, a research professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health in College Park, Maryland, in comments to the panel. “Menthol helps the poison go down. Menthol is not benign.”

–With assistance from Chris Burritt in Greensboro, North Carolina and Catherine Larkin in Washington. Editors: Jonathan Thaw, Donna Alvarado

To contact the reporter on this story: Molly Peterson in Washington at mpeterson9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net