9 Jan 2011

Health NZ urges nicotine content testing & labeling

    View submission to Maori Affairs Committee Tobacco Inquiry 2010

 Background on tobacco addiction policy

  • Nicotine is the addictive ingredient in tobacco, which ensures smokers smoke long enough to suffer ill health from smoking.
  • Nicotine content of cigarettes is the more reliable measure of the smoker’s does of nicotine. However, no  up to date data on nicotine content exist. Smokers cannot access this vital information.
  • Nicotine yields are annually reported by manufacturers, but these data are based on smoke tests which grossly underestimate the amount of nicotine inhaled. Nicotine yields are no longer printed on packets because they were misleading.
  • Nicotine content testing should apply to all 150 brands and variants of cigarettes and cigarette tobacco and to cigarillos. (For roll-your-own comparability, RYO cigarette nicotine could be based on the nicotine in a standard 0.7 g tobacco cigarette).

Method

  • Nicotine content testing requires a laboratory bench top test of the unburnt cigarette. No smoking machine is needed. Nicotine content is not subject to misleading results and can be tested at several laboratories in New Zealand. Ministry of Health would adopt a standard test method on recommendation of the laboratory chief of Crown Research Institute, ESR Porirua,  and draw up a list of laboratories independent of the tobacco industry, approved for this purpose by the Ministry of Health, and at the manufacturer’s or importer’s expense. Commercial laboratories would be glad of the work.
  • ESR laboratory in 1997 tested the top ten brands of cigarettes and found high levels of nicotine content.
  • Very low yield cigarettes. Revised text September 2011:

Commercial cigarettes of low nicotine yield, generally permit compensatory smoking and so do not lower nicotine or addiction, because the smoker can access ample nicotine content. However commercial cigarettes  at 0.2 mg or less of yield can prevent compensatory smoking. . In Kent Infina cigarette has a yield of only 0.1 mg nicotine and 1 mg tar) compensatory smoking is not possible. (even though its nicotine content is high.

For policy purposes, it is simpler to insist that all cigarettes be labeled on the basis of nicotine content.

 

 

Rationale

Nicotine content information empowers smokers and government – thus:

1. Nicotine content per cigarette will provide a rational basis for tobacco addiction policy It will for example, provide a rational basis for

a) applying nicotine tax in a fair manner in future, to persuade smokers to shift to truly low nicotine brands, and thus reduce addiction to cigarette smoking, or,

b)as a basis for a sinking lid lowering nicotine content stepwise across all brands.

2. Nicotine content stated on the packet will help smokers wishing to wean themselves off nicotine. Smokers will have accurate information for tapering their nicotine dose, based for the first time about the nicotine content of their cigarettes, so that if they wish to, they can use this information to identify and shift to truly low nicotine brands (called tapering) prior to quitting. (Nicotine yield was so inaccurate that tapering previously was found to be unsuccessful).

 

 

 

Note: Health New Zealand Ltd has no commercial interest in the above issue.

 

Recommendation

 

Health New Zealand Ltd urges the Maori Affairs Select Committee and its Inquiry into the Tobacco Industry to recommend to Parliament that current regulations under Section 33 of the Smokefree Environments Act 1990. be amended so that:

 

1) Tobacco manufacturers and importers be required in future to report the nicotine content on all brands and brand variants of cigarettes cigarette tobacco and cigarillos, offered for sale, based on tests by an industry-independent laboratory recommended by the Ministry of Health, at the expense of the Ministry of Health.

 

2) Ministry of Health require nicotine content information to be printed on the packet or otherwise made available to smokers, so they can use this information to wean themselves off nicotine at any time they so decide.

- Murray Laugesen QSO

A law ending cigarette sales can save 4000 lives and $2 billion in health care costs annually

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