Nicotine is highly addictive and plays a dominant role in sustaining commercial tobacco use. This study assesses support for a policy to lower the nicotine levels in both cigarettes and cigars because reducing nicotine levels to less addictive or non-addictive levels is expected to reduce tobacco use and the resulting tobacco-related disease and death. Data came from SpringStyles 2023, a web panel survey of adults in the USA, aged 18 years or older (N=6694). Overall, 79.9% of adults supported this policy, including 69.3% of adults who currently smoke cigarettes, 70.2% of adults who currently smoke cigars and 79.2% of adults who reported that they tried to quit smoking in the past year. These findings can help inform federal, state, local, tribal and territorial efforts to reduce commercial tobacco product use.

In the United States (U.S.), secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure causes more than 41,000 deaths among nonsmoking adults annually. Adoption of smoke-free laws in public areas has increased, but private settings such as vehicles remain a source of SHS exposure. This study assessed change in voluntary smoke-free vehicle rules and SHS exposure in personal vehicles among U.S. adults between two periods, 2009-2010 and 2013-2014, using data from the National Adult Tobacco Survey (NATS). NATS is a national landline and cellular telephone survey of non-institutionalized adults aged ≥18 years in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. We assessed percentage change in the prevalence of smoke-free vehicle rules among all adults and SHS exposure in vehicles among nonsmoking adults, overall, by sociodemographic factors (sex, age, race/ethnicity, education, marital status, annual household income, U.S. region), and by cigarette smoking status. During 2009-2010 to 2013-2014, the percentage of adults with a 100% smoke-free vehicle rule increased from 73.6% to 79.5% (% change = +8.0%; p < 0.05). Among nonsmokers, SHS exposure in vehicles in the previous 7 days decreased from 9.2% to 8.2% (% change = -10.9%; p < 0.05). Smoke-free rules in private settings such as vehicles, in coordination with comprehensive smoke-free policies in indoor public settings, can help reduce SHS exposure and promote smoke-free norms.