Health warnings have adorned cigarette packaging for over six decades, and the addictive nature of tobacco has been extensively documented since the 1970s. Despite these long-standing health alerts and decades of scientific research highlighting the dangers of tobacco products, usage rates remain concerningly high. Currently, nearly one in five adults in the United States—almost 50 million people—continues to report tobacco use, underscoring the persistent public health challenge that tobacco presents. Scientists and policymakers worldwide continue to grapple with effective strategies to curb tobacco consumption while simultaneously confronting a tobacco industry that relentlessly innovates to maintain product appeal and accessibility.
At the forefront of tobacco control research is Roberta Freitas-Lemos, an assistant professor and tobacco researcher affiliated with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech. Freitas-Lemos highlights the complexity of tobacco regulation, which she characterizes as a “patchwork approach.” This fragmented regulatory landscape involves a variety of tools and policies aimed at reducing tobacco use, yet the cumulative effectiveness of these measures requires rigorous experimental evaluation. The ultimate goal is to identify evidence-based interventions that can decisively improve health outcomes by discouraging tobacco initiation and promoting cessation.
Among recent regulatory efforts, restrictions on tobacco flavorings, especially menthol, have garnered substantial attention. Menthol, a minty additive, masks the harshness of cigarette smoke and facilitates initiation, particularly among young and marginalized populations. Concurrently, taxation strategies aimed at inflating the cost of tobacco products seek to create economic disincentives for purchase. Freitas-Lemos and her team have conducted three interrelated studies, each published in the journal Tobacco Control, to explore diverse aspects of tobacco regulations—including marketing tactics that circumvent menthol restrictions, the behavioral impacts of flavor bans, and the effects of multiple taxation models on consumer choices.
One pivotal study delved into the marketing of menthol cigarette accessory products, which are designed to add menthol flavor to cigarettes outside of the cigarette itself. Such accessories pose a significant challenge to public health regulations intended to eliminate menthol in cigarettes, as they can effectively undermine the intended impact of flavor bans. By comparing advertisement language and marketing practices in the United States and Europe, researchers discerned a clear divergence: European outlets, where menthol accessories remain legal, market them overtly as cigarette flavor enhancers. In contrast, U.S. retailers, operating within menthol ban jurisdictions such as Massachusetts and California, rebrand these products as “air refreshers” or devices for “air filtering purposes,” thus masking their use with cigarettes.
This evolving marketing lexicon is an astute industry response designed to circumvent legal prohibitions and maintain the consumer demand for mentholated tobacco experiences. The introduction of products like aroma cards, flavor capsules, and sprays actively marketed under innocuous descriptors challenges regulators’ ability to enforce bans effectively. Understanding these tactics is critical; without vigilant monitoring, public health gains from flavor prohibitions may be significantly compromised. Freitas-Lemos emphasizes the necessity of scrutinizing how the tobacco industry adapts its messaging to sidestep regulatory frameworks, which ultimately threatens the integrity of public health policies.
In another study, Freitas-Lemos employed the Experimental Tobacco Marketplace, an innovative simulated online retail environment developed at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, to investigate behavioral shifts induced by flavor bans. The experimental design included twenty-five menthol cigarette smokers who were subjected to four scenarios featuring varying degrees of flavor restrictions across conventional cigarettes and e-cigarettes. The marketplace also included access to nicotine replacement therapies, such as gums and lozenges, allowing for a comprehensive analysis of substitution effects.
The findings illuminated consequential behavioral adaptations: prohibiting menthol in cigarettes resulted in reduced purchases of these products, with corresponding increases in e-cigarette consumption. When flavors were additionally banned in e-cigarettes, participants demonstrated heightened acquisition of nicotine replacement therapies. These outcomes suggest that policy interactions—the combined impact of flavor bans across multiple product categories—can influence tobacco users to transition toward less harmful alternatives or cessation aids. Such insights are invaluable for policymakers aiming to craft harmonized regulations that optimize public health benefits.
The final study in the series examined the role of taxation as a lever for modifying tobacco product consumption patterns. Utilizing the Experimental Tobacco Marketplace once again, researchers exposed nearly 400 participants to four distinctive tax structures. These included differential tax rates based on product certification for reduced health risks, nicotine content, harm reduction potential, and universal taxation across tobacco products but exemption of nicotine replacement therapies.
Results revealed that all tax policies succeeded in decreasing overall tobacco spending; however, tax schemes scaled according to nicotine content were most efficacious. This strategy not only substantially reduced expenditures but also motivated a shift toward untaxed nicotine replacement products, highlighting the power of economically incentivized harm reduction. Notably, these taxation effects manifested consistently across socioeconomic strata, an essential consideration given the disproportionate tobacco burden experienced by populations with lower income and educational attainment.
Collectively, Freitas-Lemos’ research underscores the intricate dynamics of tobacco regulation and industry countermeasures. Flavor bans must be accompanied by vigilant enforcement against product innovations that undermine restrictions, such as menthol accessories marketed under alternative guises. Policy coherence across tobacco and nicotine delivery products is essential to guide consumers toward less harmful options or cessation. Moreover, taxation strategies that discriminate based on product risk profiles can effectively steer consumer behavior while promoting health equity.
The impetus behind these scientific endeavors is unequivocal: tobacco remains a formidable cause of preventable morbidity and mortality worldwide despite prolonged public health campaigns. Disentangling the complex interplay between regulatory policies, consumer behavior, and industry strategies is critical in evolving effective tobacco control frameworks. Freitas-Lemos’ research offers empirically grounded insights to inform progressive legislation and public health initiatives striving to curb tobacco use and its devastating health consequences.
Funding support for these studies was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. Additional backing came from the Lyerly Postdoctoral Excellence Award and the Red Gates Foundation, facilitating rigorous and policy-relevant tobacco control research.
Subject of Research: People
Article Title: Air refresher? Menthol cigarette accessory marketing in the USA and parallels in countries with menthol bans
News Publication Date: 25-Feb-2026
Web References: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/tc-2025-059931
Image Credits: Clayton Metz/Virginia Tech
Keywords: Tobacco, Addiction, Human health
