Examining the impact of England’s menthol cigarette ban on postban smoking cessation: longitudinal findings from the England arm of the 2020–2022 ITC Four Country Smoking and Vaping Surveys
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: In May 2020, England banned menthol as a characterising flavour in cigarettes. However, the sale of menthol accessories (eg, filters, flavour cards) remains permitted. This study assessed the impact of England's menthol ban on quit attempts and quit success. METHODS: Longitudinal data came from Waves 3 (2020, preban) and 4 (2022, postban) of the England arm of the International Tobacco Control Four Country Smoking and Vaping Survey. A nationally representative sample of 839 adults who smoke, were followed up, and provided sufficient data to derive menthol smoking (defined as smoking menthol cigarette brands/varieties) were included (n=112 smoked menthol, n=727 non-menthol, cigarettes preban). Logistic regressions examined associations between smoking menthol (vs non-menthol) preban and quit attempts and quit success postban. Menthol accessory use postban was also examined. RESULTS: At baseline (preban), 12.8% of adults who smoked used menthol (vs non-menthol) cigarettes, compared with 6.3% postban (AOR 0.46, 95% CI=0.30-0.69, p<0.001). Quit attempts were similar between participants who smoked menthol (vs non-menthol) preban (29.5% vs 27.0%; AOR 0.72, 95% CI=0.31-1.67). Quit success was higher among participants who smoked menthol (vs non-menthol) preban, although wide CIs included the possibility of no difference (20.1% vs 14.2%; AOR 1.25, 95% CI=0.56-2.79). Among those who smoked menthol cigarettes preban, 43.4% continued smoking menthol and 32.1% reported using menthol accessories postban. CONCLUSIONS: While quit success was higher among participants who smoked menthol, small sample sizes and wide CIs limited the ability to detect associations. Continued menthol use and widespread accessory use suggest regulatory loopholes may be undermining the ban's effectiveness.
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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 | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| 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 | 0.000 | 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".