The Impact of Nicotine Dose on the Reinforcing Value of Cigarettes in Adolescents

Abstract

Objectives: The FDA is considering the implementation of a national nicotine reduction policy for cigarettes, and such a policy may reduce the reinforcing efficacy of cigarettes and ultimately reduce tobacco dependence. However, it is not yet known how different levels of nicotine may affect the reinforcing efficacy of cigarettes in adolescents. We aimed to determine how reduced nicotine content may affect adolescents' demand for cigarettes using the cigarette purchase task (CPT).

Methods: Adolescent daily smokers (ages 15-19, n = 50) completed a CPT for their usual brand cigarette and for each dose of SPECTRUM research cigarettes (15.8, 5.2, 1.3, 0.4 mg nicotine/g tobacco) during four laboratory sessions. We conducted repeated measures ANOVAs to evaluate the effect of nicotine dose on five demand indices derived from the CPT.

Results: Tests revealed significantly higher demand for usual brand than each research cigarette dose (all p's < .01); dose did not significantly affect any measure when usual brand was excluded.

Conclusions: These results demonstrate the potential utility of the CPT for comparing the reinforcing efficacy of cigarettes varying in nicotine content in adolescents, and indicate a significantly reduced reinforcing efficacy of all research cigarettes relative to usual brand.

Keywords: adolescent; nicotine; regulatory science; smoking.

Figure 1.

Mean and standard deviation of intensity, breakpoint, Omax, and Pmax across dose.

Figure 2.

Mean fitted curves of demand for cigarettes across dose.

Figure 3.

Percent of participants reporting that they would smoke zero cigarettes if they were free at each dose. Asterisks denote a significant difference relative to usual brand.