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At the end of this period, they were free to return to their usual commercial cigarette brand, and most of them did. When tested one month later, they were smoking about 40 percent fewer cigarettes per day, with a comparable reduction in nicotine intake, compared to when the study began. Even more promising, one fourth of the smokers quit smoking entirely while the study was in progress, the researchers found.

This study supports the idea that if tobacco companies were required to reduce the levels of nicotine in cigarette tobacco, young people who start smoking could avoid becoming addicted, and long-time smokers could reduce or end their smoking, Benowitz said.

This could spare millions of people from the severe health effects of long-term smoking, he added.

Benowitz is a UCSF professor of medicine, psychiatry and biopharmaceutical sciences, and chief, Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at SFGH.

In 1994, Benowitz and colleague Jack Henningfield proposed in the New England Journal of Medicine that federal regulations should require cigarette manufacturers to gradually reduce nicotine content of all cigarettes sold in the U.S.

Scientists have conducted studies to test nicotine-reduction strategies, using commercial low-yield cigarettes. Such cigarettes do reduce nicotine yield when tested by smoking machines because manufacturers have engineered the cigarettes to burn faster, and they have used highly porous paper and ventilation holes above the filter. These cigarettes contain significant levels of nicotine and such cigarette engineering does not lead to decreased nicotine intake, because smokers are easily able to obtain the nicotine by taking more frequent and bigger puffs, Benowitz and his co-authors noted.

In contrast, in the new study, the absolute content of nicotine in the tobacco was reduced so that it was very difficult or
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