# Project 1: The effects of cigarette package color on smoking behavior, exposure and risk perception when using low nicotine content cigarettes

> **NIH NIH U54** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2020 · $754,955

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
The US FDA has the authority to regulate cigarette nicotine levels. Cigarettes with reduced nicotine content
decrease dependence and toxicant exposure, suggesting potential public health benefits of mandating a low
nicotine product standard. These findings, however, come primarily from studies using investigational low
nicotine content cigarettes in basic packaging with no accompanying marketing campaign. Thus, there is no
data currently available to inform the regulation of how these products are marketed—a domain also under the
FDA's authority, an area likely to be manipulated by the tobacco industry, and a potential opportunity to
maximize the regulatory impact of mandated nicotine reduction. In a regulated environment where nicotine
content is reduced to the same level across all cigarettes, the tobacco industry will likely rely on marketing, and
specifically packaging—the “final communication vehicle”—to express brand image, promote sales, and
implicitly convey brand attractiveness, quality and health appeals. The industry previously manipulated the
packaging of “light” cigarettes using lighter colored packages to falsely imply that these products were less
harmful than regular cigarettes. If low nicotine content cigarettes utilize similar misleading packaging, this may
create perceptions of reduced harm that undermine benefits of nicotine reduction by increasing product use
and exposure.
Tobacco control advocates argue that plain packaging should decrease smokers' beliefs about the safety of
certain colored cigarette brands, and may also make cigarette brands less appealing or satisfying. However,
studies have not examined how plain cigarette packaging will affect smoking behaviors when nicotine content
in the cigarette is significantly lowered. Thus, research evaluating packaging effects on smokers' use of low
nicotine content cigarettes and their exposure to toxic constituents is critically needed to inform tobacco control
policy decisions before these products are mandated and widely marketed.
This project seeks to evaluate the effects of low nicotine content cigarette packaging on two primary outcomes:
smoking behavior (i.e., daily cigarette consumption and puffing behavior) and biological toxicant exposure. We
will also explore how low nicotine content cigarette packaging affects product risk perceptions and subjective
ratings to determine if these outcomes mediate packaging effects on smoking behaviors. The proposed study
will be the first to examine low nicotine content cigarettes in the context of cigarette packaging using rigorous
behavioral, biological, subjective and psychological panels of outcomes. Our cigarette package manipulations
will examine both tobacco industry approaches and promising public health initiatives that will provide essential
empirical evidence to inform future FDA regulation.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9999493
- **Project number:** 5U54CA229973-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Andrew A Strasser
- **Activity code:** U54 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $754,955
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-14 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9999493

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9999493, Project 1: The effects of cigarette package color on smoking behavior, exposure and risk perception when using low nicotine content cigarettes (5U54CA229973-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9999493. Licensed CC0.

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