“We have seen a remarkable decline in young adult smoking over the past decade. However, rates among older adults who smoke have remained stagnant,” said Thuy Le, assistant research scientist of health management and policy, who along with David Mendez, professor of health management and policy, and Ken Warner, professor emeritus, of health management and policy, found that quitting smoking after age 65 will add at least eight years of life for nearly 10% of people.

At one time, the FDA’s thinking about menthol e-cigarettes seemed to be “if they’re going to ban menthol in cigarettes, it might be reasonable to have an alternative for those who want to quit smoking.” — CAsToR Principal Investigator Rafael Meza, PhD

Oral nicotine pouches – like Zyn and Velo in the U.S. – appear to be less toxic than cigarettes and deliver comparable levels of nicotine. This makes them an alternative for people who smoke. However, people who’ve never smoked are using them, too, and youth are open to trying them. These are key findings of our recent systematic review, published in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

In a study in 2021 that used a model to assess the effects of a menthol ban, David Levy, a Georgetown University oncology professor, found that it could lead to an overall reduction in smoking of about 15 percent. By 2060, the study projected, as many as 11 million years of life could be gained rather than lost to smoking-related deaths.

“These effects are delayed,” Dr. Levy said, “but nevertheless important.”

“It adds to the already very compelling evidence that banning menthol would result in fewer people smoking cigarettes and provide higher public health benefits, especially for populations that have pretty high rates of use, particularly Black Americans. There’s just more and more evidence every day that it would be a good idea to do a ban.” — Rafael Meza, PhD

Public health campaigns and programs outlining the dangers of smoking aren’t really aimed at older adults, says Rafael Meza, an integrative oncologist at the BC Cancer Research Institute in Vancouver and the lead author of a new study on adult smoking. “In the U.S., smoking really has a generational pattern,” he says.

Meza’s new analysis, published Dec. 1 in JAMA Health Forum, shows that while people ages 40 through 64 smoke the most, Americans 65 and above are picking up the habit in a way nobody else is. While the prevalence of regular smokers dropped to 15.2% down from 21.2% in a little over a decade for that middle-aged group, older adults saw an increase from 8.7% to 9.4% in the same time frame.