Impact of non-menthol flavours in tobacco products on perceptions and use among youth, young adults and adults: a systematic review

Abstract

ObjectiveThis systematic review examines the impact of non-menthol flavours in tobacco products on tobacco use perceptions and behaviours among youth, young adults and adults.Data sourcesEnglish-language peer-reviewed publications indexed in 4 databases were searched through April 2016.Study selectionA search strategy was developed related to tobacco products and flavours. Of 1688 articles identified, we excluded articles that were not English-language, were not peer-reviewed, were qualitative, assessed menthol-flavoured tobacco products only and did not contain original data on outcomes that assessed the impact of flavours in tobacco products on perceptions and use behaviour.Data extractionOutcome measures were identified and tabulated. 2 researchers extracted the data independently and used a validated quality assessment tool to assess study quality.Data synthesis40 studies met the inclusion criteria. Data showed that tobacco product packaging with flavour descriptors tended to be rated as more appealing and as less harmful by tobacco users and non-users. Many tobacco product users, especially adolescents, reported experimenting, initiating and continuing to use flavoured products because of the taste and variety of the flavours. Users of many flavoured tobacco products also showed decreased likelihood of intentions to quit compared with non-flavoured tobacco product users.ConclusionsFlavours in most tobacco products appear to play a key role in how users and non-users, especially youth, perceive, initiate, progress and continue using tobacco products. Banning non-menthol flavours from tobacco products may ultimately protect public health by reducing tobacco use, particularly among youth.

Should Flavors be Banned in E-cigarettes? Evidence on Adult Smokers and Recent Quitters from a Discrete Choice Experiment

“…There is substantial preference heterogeneity across individuals' characteristics. Specifically, younger adult smokers and recent quitters 14 have preferences for menthol combustible cigarettes and all flavored e-cigarettes, which is in keeping with the literature (Carrieri and Jones, 2016;Huang et al, 2016;Hartwell et al, 2016;Pesko et al, 2016;. Older adult smokers prefer tobacco flavored combustible cigarettes, which is also consistent with extant literature (Bonhomme et al, 2016;Harrell et al, 2017).…”

“…We combine the categories of sweet and fruit because: together they incorporate many of the flavors of ecigarettes available; historically they have been regulated differentially from menthol; and this is consistent with previous literature(Bonhomme et al, 2016;Huang et al, 2016;Pepper et al, 2016). We also test for the validity of pooling them as explained below.…”

Perceptions and Experiences with Flavored Non-Menthol Tobacco Products: A Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies

“…Prior systematic reviews from Huang et al [15] and Feirman et al [14] identified several quantitative studies illustrating associations between flavor descriptors and reduced harm perceptions. Our study extends these findings by highlighting potential pathways though which these associations occur.…”

The Amphoteric Ion Exchange Membrane Based on CS/CMC for Tobacco-Protein Adsorption and Separation from Tobacco Extract

“…The density and porosity measurement were also conducted to investigate physical characteristics of CS/CMC blend membranes. It can be seen from Table 1 that the density of the pure CS membrane was 0.4237 g/cm 3 , while the density of the CS dense membrane was only 0.1949 g/cm 3 . The porosity of the pure CS membrane reached 54.00 wt%, which was ascribed to the good realized pore-forming effect of the membrane.…”

“…As one of the important tobacco flavors, tobacco extract has been widely applied to the cigarette industry, which plays an important role in the improvement of cigarette quality [1][2][3]. Extracted from tobacco or its fragment, tobacco extract usually contains a large quantity of macromolecular substances such as protein, pectin, and starch, which are suspected to have an adverse effect on the quality of tobacco extract [4].…”