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Tobacco industry use of flavours to recruit new users of little cigars and cigarillos.

ABSTRACT: While flavoured cigarettes were prohibited in the USA in 2009, flavoured little cigars and cigarillos (LCCs) remain on the market. We describe the evolving strategies used by tobacco companies to encourage uptake of flavoured LCCs and industry research findings on consumer perceptions of flavoured LCC products.Analysis of internal tobacco industry documents was triangulated with data from tobacco advertisement archives, national newspapers, trade press and the internet.Flavoured LCC products were associated with young and inexperienced tobacco users, women and African-Americans. Internal industry studies confirmed that menthol and candy-like flavours (eg, vanilla and cherry) increased LCC appeal to starters by masking the heavy cigar taste, reducing throat irritation and making LCC smoke easier to inhale. To appeal to new users, manufacturers also reduced the size of cigars to make them more cigarette-like, introduced filters and flavoured filter tips, emphasised mildness and ease of draw in advertising, and featured actors using little cigars in television commercials. RJ Reynolds tried to capitalise on the popularity of menthol cigarettes among African-Americans and marketed a menthol little cigar to African-Americans.Tobacco companies engaged in a calculated effort to blur the line between LCCs to increase the appeal to cigarette smokers, and the use of flavours facilitated these efforts. Bans on flavoured cigarettes should be expanded to include flavoured LCCs, and tobacco use prevention initiatives should include LCCs.

SUBMITTER: Kostygina G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4414663 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Tobacco industry use of flavours to recruit new users of little cigars and cigarillos.

Kostygina Ganna G Glantz Stanton A SA Ling Pamela M PM

Tobacco control 20141029 1

<h4>Objective</h4>While flavoured cigarettes were prohibited in the USA in 2009, flavoured little cigars and cigarillos (LCCs) remain on the market. We describe the evolving strategies used by tobacco companies to encourage uptake of flavoured LCCs and industry research findings on consumer perceptions of flavoured LCC products.<h4>Methods</h4>Analysis of internal tobacco industry documents was triangulated with data from tobacco advertisement archives, national newspapers, trade press and the i ...[more]

PMID: 25354674

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Project description:IntroductionIn 2016, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would regulate little cigars and cigarillos (LCCs) and expressed concern about the concomitant use of combustible tobacco products. To understand LCC use among socially-disadvantaged cigarette smokers, we assessed (1) the prevalence of concomitant use of subtypes of LCCs: LCC-tobacco, LCC-blunt, and LCC- poly use, which includes use of both LCC-tobacco and LCC-blunt and (2) and its association with sociodemographic factors and substance use behaviors using race/ethnicity and gender stratified models.MethodsIn 2015, a web-based survey was administered to a national probability sample of black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, and white cigarette smokers aged 18-44 (n = 1018). Weighted estimates were used to assess current LCC-tobacco, LCC-blunt, and LCC-poly use. Multinomial regression models assessed sociodemographic, other tobacco and substance use correlates associated with LCC user subtypes.ResultsOf cigarette smokers, 63% did not smoke LCCs; 15.1% were LCC-tobacco users; 11.1% were LCC-blunt users; and 10.5% were LCC-poly users. Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino cigarette smokers had higher odds of LCC-tobacco, LCC-blunt, and LCC-poly use compared to white cigarette smokers. Blacks/African Americans who initiated cigarette smoking before age 18 and smoked other tobacco products had greater odds of LCC-tobacco use than whites. Male cigarette smokers who smoked other tobacco products and females who had early onset of cigarette use also had greater odds of LCC-tobacco use.ConclusionsOver 30% of cigarette smokers concomitantly used LCCs, which may prolong smoking. Accurate estimates of diverse LCC use behaviors may increase our understanding of the potential harms of concomitant use.ImplicationsAggregate measures of LCC smoking do not distinguish subtypes of use among socially-disadvantaged cigarette smokers (ie, young adults, blacks/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos), who may engage in these unique smoking behaviors. We document the prevalence of young adult cigarette smokers who dual use LCC-tobacco and LCC-blunts and are poly users of LCC-tobacco + LCC-blunts, and identify sociodemographic groups at risk for use. The Food and Drug Administration is concerned about concomitant behavior, which may increase chronic disease risk and addiction. Accurate estimates of LCC smoking behaviors may increase our understanding of the harms of concomitant use; which can inform prevention programs that specifically target LCC subtypes.

Project description:Little cigar and cigarillo use is becoming more prevalent in the United States and elsewhere, with implications for public health. As little cigar and cigarillo use grows in popularity, big social media data (eg, Instagram, Google Web Search, Twitter) can be used to capture and document the context in which individuals use, and are marketed, these tobacco products. Big social media data may allow people to organically demonstrate how and why they use little cigars and cigarillos, unprimed by a researcher, without instrument bias and at low costs.This study characterized Swisher (the most popular brand of cigars in the United States, controlling over 75% of the market share) little cigar- and cigarillo-related posts on Instagram to inform the design of tobacco education campaigns and the development of future tobacco control efforts, and to demonstrate the utility in using big social media data in understanding health behaviors.We collected images from Instagram, an image-based social media app allowing users to capture, customize, and post photos on the Internet with over 400 million active users. Inclusion criteria for this study consisted of an Instagram post with the hashtag "#swisher". We established rules for coding themes of images.Of 1967 images collected, 486 (24.71%) were marijuana related, 348 (17.69%) were of tobacco products or promotional material, 324 (16.47%) showed individuals smoking, 225 (11.44%) were memes, and 584 (29.69%) were classified as other (eg, selfies, food, sexually explicit images). Of the marijuana-related images, 157/486 (32.3%) contained a Swisher wrapper, indicating that a Swisher product was used in blunt making, which involves hollowing out a cigar and refilling it with marijuana.Images from Instagram may be used to complement and extend the study of health behaviors including tobacco use. Images may be as valuable as, or more valuable than, words from other social media platforms alone. Posts on Instagram showing Swisher products, including blunt making, could add to the normalization of little cigar and cigarillo use and is an area of future research. Tobacco control researchers should design social media campaigns to combat smoking imagery found on popular sites such as Instagram.

Project description:Despite their potential importance with regard to tobacco-related health outcomes, as well as their hypothesized role in the production of tobacco-specific N-nitrosamines, bacterial constituents of tobacco products lack characterization. Specifically, to our knowledge, there has been no comprehensive characterization of the effects of storage conditions on the bacterial communities associated with little cigars and cigarillos. To address this knowledge gap, we characterized the bacterial community composition of the tobacco and wrapper components of the following four products: Swisher Sweets Original; Swisher Sweets, Sweet Cherry; Cheyenne Cigars Full Flavor 100's; and Cheyenne Menthol Box. Each product was stored under three different conditions of temperature and relative humidity to mimic different user storage conditions: room (20°C 50% RH), refrigerator (5°C 18% RH) and pocket (25°C 30% RH). On days 0, 5, 9 and 14, subsamples were collected, the wrapper and tobacco were separated, and their total DNA was extracted separately and purified. Resulting DNA was then used in PCR assays targeting the V3 V4 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene, followed by sequencing using Illumina HiSeq 300bp PE. Resulting sequences were processed using the Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology (QIIME) software package, followed by analyses in R using the Phyloseq and Vegan packages. A single bacterial phylum, Firmicutes, dominated in the wrapper subsamples whereas the tobacco subsamples were dominated by Proteobacteria. Cheyenne Menthol Box (CMB) samples were characterized by significant differential abundances for 23 bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in tobacco subsamples and 27 OTUs in the wrapper subsamples between day 0 and day 14 under all conditions. OTUs from the genera Acinetobacter and Bacillus significantly increased in the CMB tobacco subsamples, and OTUs from Bacillus, Streptococcus, Lactobacillus, and Enterococcus significantly increased in the CMB wrapper subsamples over time. These initial results suggest that the bacterial communities of little cigars and cigarillos are dynamic over time and varying storage conditions.

Dataset Information

Tobacco industry use of flavours to recruit new users of little cigars and cigarillos.

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Tobacco industry use of flavours to recruit new users of little cigars and cigarillos.

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