New York: A research company in North Carolina is testing new experimental cigarettes made of genetically altered tobacco to lower the nicotine content by 97 percent while preserving all the other tastes and smells and rituals for smokers of conventional cigarettes.
One study of the test cigarettes will follow about 500 smokers over six months to determine whether they are more likely to quit if they switch to those cigarettes quickly or gradually.
The experimental cigarettes are produced by a Massachusetts company, the 22nd Century Group, which holds 98 patents for genetic manipulation of tobacco plants to alter the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.
Joseph Pandolfino is chief of 22nd Century, which altered the tobacco plants.
The National Institutes of Health bought 9 million of these cigarettes, marked “for research purposes only,” from the 22nd Century Group as part of a broadening scientific effort to find ways to regulate cigarettes so that they are nonaddictive.
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