Menthol cigarette bans: Tobacco giants respond with different green labels and soft words in Canada

In this podcast, Becky Freeman speaks with Jennifer Brown and Joanna Cohen, from the Institute for Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Maryland, USA. They are two of the authors of the paper "Tobacco industry response to menthol cigarette bans in Alberta and Nova Scotia, Canada". The study, published in Tobacco Control, found that while menthol cigarettes are not being sold anymore, there are new products on the market that look almost identical to the menthol cigarettes available before the ban and nearly 90 percent of them are being marketed as a different, smoother alternative to regular cigarettes. Menthol cigarette bans were enacted in Nova Scotia in June 2015 and in Alberta in September 2015 and are believed to be the first implemented in the world. The Institute for Global Tobacco Control conducted this research with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit. For images of the new packages and full details of the study, visit:

http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2016/07/19/tobaccocontrol-2016-053099.full.