Cigarette Smoking Behavior

This study aims to investigate harm-reduction sampling in a choice format versus medicinal nicotine sampling on smoking behavior, identify mechanisms of sampling's effects, and explore moderators of these effects among a national sample of people unmotivated to quit smoking. Participants will be randomized 2:1 to choose one of two harm-reduction products (ECIG, ONP) versus a medicinal nicotine control condition (nicotine patch + lozenge, NPL), receive a 4-week starter product regimen, and then be followed for 6 months to assess use behavior.

Cigarette smoking remains common, particularly in rural areas, despite ample evidence that smoking causes cancer and respiratory disease. Successful smoking cessation yields the majority of its health benefits (e.g., avoidance of lung cancer) after years of sustained behavioral change; however, people who smoke cigarettes tend to show elevated rates of delay discounting (i.e., devaluation of delayed outcomes) and a bias for immediate gratification. The overall goal of this project is to develop different versions of an episodic future thinking intervention (i.e., visualization of the future) and test their feasibility and efficacy for smoking cessation in rural and urban populations.

In a within-subject design, cigarette smokers, stratified by age, will purchase tobacco products under three tax rate conditions based on abuse liability, that is taxes based on: (1) product category score (i.e. score ranging from 0-1 based on abuse liability effect sizes); (2) product category rank (i.e. position of a product relative to all others; e.g. 1st, 5th); and (3) product tiers (i.e. low-, medium-, high abuse liability), as well as a control. In the ETM, the effects of these interventions will be examined on cigarette demand and other products substitution. The investigators will use a repeated-measures (within subject) analysis of variance (ANOVA) to test if there are differences between conditions (i.e., tax proposals) independently for each product. The models will include study design parameters for order effects to account for counterbalancing the tax conditions in the ETM. Each tax condition will be compared to the control. All distributional assumptions will be checked prior to analyses and the appropriate transformations will be employed, if needed. For each significant result from the omnibus test, the investigators will perform planned contrasts to test the proposed hypotheses previously described. Note that the omnibus test can result in a significant finding while the contrasts of interest may be non-significant. In this case, the investigators will only report the results from the planned contrasts. Additional analyses might be conducted.

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn about the role of flavored on!® nicotine pouch products (the research products), an oral tobacco-leaf-free product, in the replacement of cigarettes with the use of the research products among adults who smoke cigarettes. The main question it aims to answer is whether flavored (vs. non-flavored) research products generate greater reduction of cigarette smoking among adults who smoke cigarettes. Participants will be provided with research products to use for 6 weeks. Researchers will compare the reduction in cigarette smoking between participants with access to a complete flavor profile of research products and participants with access to only the Original (non-flavored) variety of research product to see if reduction in cigarette smoking is greater among those with access to flavored research products.