Switching Between Menthol and Nonmenthol Cigarettes: Findings From the U.S. Cohort of the International Tobacco Control Four Country Survey
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: This article examines trends in switching between menthol and nonmenthol cigarettes, smoker characteristics associated with switching, and associations among switching, indicators of nicotine dependence, and quitting activity. METHODS: Participants were 5,932 U.S. adult smokers who were interviewed annually as part of the International Tobacco Control Four Country Survey between 2002 and 2011. Generalized estimating equations (GEEs) were used to examine the prevalence of menthol cigarette use and switching between menthol and nonmenthol cigarettes (among 3,118 smokers who participated in at least 2 consecutive surveys). We also evaluated characteristics associated with menthol cigarette use and associations among switching, indicators of nicotine dependence, and quitting activity using GEEs. RESULTS: Across the entire study period, 27% of smokers smoked menthol cigarettes; prevalence was highest among Blacks (79%), young adults (36%), and females (30%). Prevalence of switching between menthol and nonmenthol cigarettes was low (3% switched to menthol and 8% switched to nonmenthol), and switchers tended to revert back to their previous type. Switching types was not associated with indicators of nicotine dependence or quit attempts. However, those who switched cigarette brands within cigarette types were more likely to attempt to quit smoking. CONCLUSIONS: While overall switching rates were low, the percentage who switched from menthol to nonmenthol was significantly higher than the percentage who switched from nonmenthol to menthol. An asymmetry was seen in patterns of switching such that reverting back to menthol was more common than reverting back to nonmenthol, particularly among Black smokers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".