By: Chloe Huang

There are more than 30 million smokers in the United States. But the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now taking action to drastically decrease that amount. In June, the FDA announced that they plan to cut the level of nicotine in cigarettes sold in the United States. They estimated that a fully developed proposal and timeline to accomplish this task will be finished by May of 2023.

While the FDA has not released any specific details about this plan yet, experts hope it will include a reduction of nicotine levels in cigarettes by 95%, effective immediately. In multiple federally funded studies, scientists discovered that 95% is the amount of nicotine that must be cut back to help existing smokers quit.

“When you get the nicotine in tobacco low enough, you just can’t get enough nicotine to maintain the dependence,” Dr. Eric Donny, a tobacco expert at Wake Forest University School of Medicine who has conducted experiments with low nicotine cigarettes, said. “Smoking more creates adverse effects, like nausea, because the lungs can only handle so much of a burned substance.”

In the twenty-first century, the various consequences of nicotine addiction have been widely studied, but that wasn’t always the case. In 1964, a U.S. Surgeon General report linked smoking to cancer and heart disease in one of the first reports studying the harmful effects of smoking. In the next two decades, scientists revealed more facts about nicotine and how our brains react to it, painting a very startling picture.

Tobacco, the plant inside cigarettes, contains more than 7000 chemicals, many of which are harmful. However, nicotine is unique in that it is the chemical responsible for the addiction to cigarettes that many people have. This is because nicotine causes adrenaline rushes, indirectly producing dopamine, a chemical that translates in your brain as happiness.

The feeling is similar to what you feel after exercising, exhausted but happy and relaxed. The release of dopamine is artificially caused, though, so the effects are short, which is what causes people to get addicted, constantly chasing that high again. Chasing the high can have deadly consequences. Nicotine addiction kills 480,000 lives a year, according to the New York Times.

One can only hope that that number will decrease when the FDA releases their report next year. However, it looks unlikely. It is not guaranteed that science-backed policy will be included in this plan, or that this plan will even result in legislation, especially because of the immense lobbying power of the tobacco industry. But at least the FDA is trying to do something to help the millions of people caught in the throes of addiction.

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