Newswise — Restricting menthol flavor in cigarettes while making nicotine replacement therapy, such as a skin patch that can help ease withdrawal, more available and affordable has the potential to reduce socioeconomic disparities in tobacco use. That was one of the findings in a study published in May in Nicotine and Tobacco Research that marks a new use of existing data from the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC’s Addiction Recovery Research Center. Researchers analyzed data from their Experimental Tobacco Marketplace to look beyond broad effects of tax and regulatory policies for the journal’s special issue on the health equity effects of restricting flavored nicotine.
Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Smoking also accounts for more than 30 percent of the difference in life expectancy among socioeconomic groups, according to the study’s lead author, Assistant Professor Roberta Freitas-Lemos . The tobacco industry has more heavily marketed flavored tobacco products, such as menthol cigarettes, in communities with lower household incomes and educational attainment. Freitas-Lemos said the team saw an opportunity to use the marketplace to extend the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute’s work in addressing equity and inclusion in health research.
“We realized we could use an existing data set, split the sample in two based on socioeconomic status, and compa.
