Tobacco companies minting it before Wednesday’s menthol cigarette ban

Menthol cigarettes will be removed from shelves in the UK this Wednesday (20 May 2020). However new research from the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath has found that tobacco companies failed to use the four-year phasing-in period (from 2016) to prepare for this week’s ban. Instead they continued to sell and promote menthol products and to develop new products which circumvent the ban.

Published in the BMJ’s Tobacco Control, the authors argue this highlights how tobacco companies have exploited a delay in the ban to develop new products, keeping menthol products on the market for as long as possible, rather than phasing them out.

You can read the full paper here which is by Dr Rosemary Hiscock, Karin Silver, Dr Mateusz Zatoński, Prof Anna Gilmore.

There is also comprehensive information the TobaccoTactics page: Menthol Cigarettes: Industry Interference in the EU and UK