Illicit Trade Poses No Threat to an FDA Rule to Minimize Nicotine in Smoked Tobacco Products

Abstract

A US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule setting nicotine limits for cigarettes and similarly smoked tobacco products at the lowest technically achievable levels would produce extraordinarily large and rapid smoking declines. Smokers could not satisfy or sustain their nicotine addiction by smoking legal products. Minors experimenting with smoking could not become physically addicted, and any gateway from youth e-cigarette use into smoking would be closed. Even with pessimistic assumptions, tens of millions of smokers would quit, switch to non-smoked products, reduce their smoking, or never start, saving millions of lives. No other FDA action could do as much to reduce tobacco harms and costs more quickly. Moreover, any related new illicit trade that might emerge would inevitably be too small to interfere seriously with the nicotine rule’s public health gains.

Keywords: tobacco, tobacco control, nicotine, cigarette, FDA, regulation, illicit trade

JEL Classification: I18