1993: Colombian criminal Pablo Escobar—who, as head of the Medellín cartel , was arguably the world's most powerful drug trafficker in the 1980s and early '90s—was killed during a shoot-out with authorities. [Did Escobar's prison have a nightclub? Find out that and more in our list of 8 Interesting Facts About the King of Cocaine .]
Eight in 10 smokers favor requiring cigarette manufacturers to lower nicotine levels in cigarettes to make them less addictive, according to a study published by CDC scientists in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Despite substantial reductions in smoking since the 1960s, smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States causing an estimated 480 000 deaths annually, according to the authors. Of the two-thirds of smokers who would like to quit, only about 1 in 10 successfully quit each year because of the highly addictive nature of nicotine in cigarettes, they note. To curb this ongoing public health crisis, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a new strategy in 2017: lowering nicotine levels in conventional cigarettes to nonaddictive levels. In March 2018, the FDA took the first step toward enacting the policy issuing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, which sought comments on and research about the strategy’s potential effects.
According to the CDC’s web-based survey of 4037 US adults, 81% strongly or somewhat favored requirements for nonaddictive levels of nicotine in conventional cigarettes. The policy was nearly universally popular across gender and other subpopulations. More than 80% of both current (80.6%) and former (84.3%) smokers and 71.5% of current noncigarette tobacco product users expressed support for the proposal. A recent simulation study suggested that 13 million smokers would quit within 5 years of the proposed policy’s implementation.
“Lowering nicotine levels in cigarettes could help current smokers quit and make it less likely for future generations to become addicted to these products,” said Corinne Graffunder, DrPH, MPH, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health in a press release.
