Children who smoke menthol cigarettes more likely to get addicted, study finds

Children who experiment with menthol cigarettes are more likely to become habitual smokers than their peers who start out with the regular variety, according to a US study that looked at tens of thousands of students.

The researchers, whose results appeared in the journal Addiction, found that children who were dabbling with menthol cigarettes were 80 per cent more likely to become regular smokers over the next few years, compared to those experimenting with regular cigarettes.

Menthol is added to cigarettes to give them a minty “refreshing” flavour, and critics have charged that menthol makes cigarettes more palatable to new smokers - many of whom are kids - and may be especially likely to encourage addiction.

“This study adds additional evidence that menthol cigarettes are a potential risk factor for kids becoming established, adult smokers,” said study leader James Nonnemaker, of the research institute RTI International in North Carolina.

He cautioned, though, that the findings do not prove that the menthol cigarettes themselves are to blame, given limitations in the study.

The study covered three years’ worth of surveys of over 47,000 US middle school and high school students. That included almost 1,800 children who had just started smoking during the first or second survey, one third of whom had opted for menthol cigarettes.