Researchers in New Zealand say that nicotine is not the only ingredient in tobacco products that makes quitting difficult, according to a story by Peter Sergo for the Medical Daily.

At the Smokefree Oceania conference in Auckland, Penelope Truman, of the Institute of Environmental Science and Research, presented a study that was said to show how rats exhibited a greater desire to obtain a dose of smoke from non-nicotinic hand-rolling tobacco than from either doses of nicotine or from smoke from factory-made cigarettes that contained nicotine.

Truman, along with researchers from Victoria University, gauged how keen rats were to press a lever to obtain a dose of saline that was infused with either just nicotine or a type of tobacco smoke. "Because rats showed a significantly higher willingness to go the distance to get a taste of rolling tobacco smoke, the authors concluded that a substance other than nicotine must be getting them hooked," Sergo wrote.

The study authors concluded that non-nicotinic components had a role in tobacco dependence and that some tobacco products had higher abuse liability, irrespective of nicotine levels.

"This extra chemical is an additional thing that makes smoking harder to give up," Truman reportedly told The New Zealand Herald. "This is a formal proof that some tobacco substances are more addictive than nicotine is."

What the specific tobacco component is has yet to be identified.

Lorillard is appealing to people to write to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in support of the legal sale of menthol cigarettes.

In a press note, the company said the FDA was seeking information to help it determine whether or how to regulate menthol in cigarettes beyond the existing regulations that applied to all cigarettes.

"Lorillard believes that the best available scientific evidence does not show that menthol cigarettes are more harmful than non-menthol cigarettes and that Americans have a right to make a personal choice to use any legal product," the company said.

"If [the] FDA imposed a ban or any severe regulations affecting menthol cigarettes, it would impact 30 percent of the U.S. cigarette market with serious unintended consequences.

"Many thousands of working Americans rely on menthol sales for their jobs, including those who manufacture them. Overall, nearly 500,000 U.S. jobs depend in whole or in part on the sale of menthol through existing legal channels.

"A ban on menthol in cigarettes risks giving rise to an entire industry of unregulated cigarettes sold illegally on the underground market and worsening the already widespread illicit sale of cigarettes.

"Criminal activity resulting from the illicit sale of cigarettes will add even more burdens to already constrained law enforcement efforts.

"Illicit markets carry public health costs by:

• Undermining laws to prevent sales of cigarettes to minors since cigarettes will not be sold in retail stores that check purchasers for legal age.

• Exposing smokers to more dangerous ingredients and constituents in cigarettes made by illegal manufacturers that are not under the scrutiny of FDA."

Comments on the menthol-in-cigarettes debate, which must be received by the FDA by Nov. 22, can be made at http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=FDA-2013-N-0521-0079.

And there is more information on Lorillard’s views at www.understandingmenthol.com, and at http://www.lorillard.com/support-menthol-cigarettes/#sthash.ZibEGmaC.dpuf.