The US government is preparing to require cigarette makers to reduce nicotine to non-addictive levels, local media reported on Tuesday.
The initiative could be announced as soon as this Tuesday, according to The Washington Post, which cites a source close to the matter.
The measure would require the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) develop and publish regulations, which could then be challenged by the tobacco industry, said The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the issue.
Implementation of the initiative would take several years and could be delayed or derailed by litigation, or reversed if a future government decides not to go ahead because it is unsympathetic to its goals.
Nicotine is the substance that leads millions of people to consume cigarettes. Thousands of other chemicals contained in tobacco and its smoke are responsible for diseases such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease and diabetes among others.
Although the number of smokers has been declining over the years, tobacco is responsible for 480,000 deaths a year in the United States, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Some 13.7% of American adults are current smokers, according to data from the CDC.
Reducing the level of nicotine in cigarettes has been the subject of debate among US authorities for years.
In 2017, the then commissioner of the FDAScott Gottlieb announced that he wanted to advance the issue, funding a study published in 2018 in the New England Journal of Medicine that found “reduced nicotine cigarettes … reduced exposure and dependence” and “the number of smoked cigarettes”.
The tobacco industry rejects those findings, saying that, in fact, people would smoke more.
President Joe Biden has made fighting cancer a centerpiece of his agenda, and nicotine reduction policy would fit within his goals, at minimal cost.
The economic cost of smoking amounts to more than $300 billion a year, according to CDCincluding more than $225 billion in direct adult health care and more than $156 billion in lost productivity due to premature death and smoke exposure.