University of Oklahoma, West Virginia University Researchers Earn NIH Grant to Study ‘Concept’ Flavored Cigarillos

Cigarillos, a small type of cigar, have dramatically risen in popularity, particularly those that come in flavors, such as cherry or chocolate. Some state and local laws have banned all flavored cigars, and the Food and Drug Administration has announced its intention for a federal ban. In response, the tobacco industry has introduced “concept” flavors – products with ambiguous names like “Ocean Breeze” or “Jazz” with no explicit flavor name, thereby evading any bans and subverting regulations. Sales of concept cigarillos have increased in areas where bans on flavored cigarillos exist, suggesting consumers may be switching to these products.

Research shows that people who start using tobacco often do so with a flavored product, which frequently leads to regular use and greater nicotine dependence. But less is known about concept cigarillos, which are selling faster than any other flavored product. A researcher at the University of Oklahoma, Amy Cohn, Ph.D., and her colleague at West Virginia University, Melissa Blank, Ph.D., recently earned a five-year, $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how concept cigarillos influence the potential for addiction. The results will be used to inform the FDA’s impending flavor ban on cigar products and could have wider-reaching implications for other tobacco products that come in flavors, such as e-cigarettes and tobacco-free nicotine pouches.

“If concept cigarillos are at least equally appealing as flavored cigarillos, that would mean the FDA needs to be very clear in its policy to explicitly ban concept flavors,” said Cohn, a professor of pediatrics at the OU College of Medicine and a member of the TSET Health Promotion Research Center on the OU Health Campus.

“Indeed, the intended impacts on individual and public health would not be met without the inclusion of concept flavored cigars in such a ban,” added Blank, an associate professor of behavioral neuroscience at West Virginia University.

The research team will enroll young adult cigarillo users in the study and invite them into the laboratory to smoke different flavored cigarillos, including cigarillos with a concept flavor descriptor, such as “Diamond.” Researchers will analyze the details of how they smoke each one and the differences in the extent to which people rate these cigarillo flavors as more or less satisfying and rewarding to smoke.

“Our goal is to determine if people smoke concept cigarillos differently than they do flavored products or tobacco-flavored products. Do they take deeper inhalations; do they smoke for a longer period of time? Essentially, do they like concept flavors more than other products? The main purpose is to determine whether concept flavors are potentially addictive,” Cohn said.

Another research method incorporated into the study is a simulated experimental tobacco marketplace. Study participants “shop” online for tobacco products that they would buy and use. The researchers create different scenarios in the online marketplace to study how changes in the price or availability of different cigarillo flavors affect the purchase of cigarillos and other products. For example, if someone’s preferred cigarillo flavor, like chocolate, is not available in the marketplace, will they instead “shop” for chocolate flavoring in a different tobacco product, such as an e-cigarette? This approach models the intended and unintended effects of potential public health policies.

Researchers also plan to conduct a chemical analysis of the cigarillo flavors that study participants smoke in the laboratory. Working with a team at Roswell Park Cancer Center in New York, they will extract hundreds of ingredients and additives to determine how much the products actually differ from one another chemically. The research team’s preliminary study showed similarities across cigarillo flavors, despite their different names.

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About the project

Research reported in this news release is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a component of the National Institutes of Health, under award number R01DA062632-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About the University of Oklahoma

Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university with campuses in Norman, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. As the state’s flagship university, OU serves the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation. In Oklahoma City, the OU Health Campus is one of the nation’s few academic health centers with seven health profession colleges located on the same campus. The OU Health Campus serves approximately 4,000 students in more than 70 undergraduate and graduate degree programs spanning Oklahoma City and Tulsa and is the leading research institution in Oklahoma. For more information about the OU Health Campus, visit www.ouhsc.edu.