The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published in March of 2018 (Docket No. FDA-2017-N-6189 (83 Fed. Reg. 11,818, March 16, 2018)) an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products. In the ANPRM, the FDA “is particularly interested in comments about the merits of nicotine levels like 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 mg nicotine/g of tobacco filler” and stated that extremely low levels of nicotine, like those listed in the ANPRM, might be achievable through practices and technologies that include:

• agronomic practices such as controlled growing conditions, fertilization, harvest and cross-breeding plants;
• tobacco blending;
• nicotine extraction;
• genetic engineering.

The Task Force will:

• conduct a collaborative study in global tobacco production regions;
• evaluate the impact of agronomic practices and breeding on the nicotine level of Burley and flue-cured (Virginia) tobacco leaf;
• determine which levels of nicotine in tobacco filler are technically achievable;
• produce a technical report and an external publication.

Due to the challenges associated with the acceptance of genetic engineering technologies across the different tobacco production regions, only conventional breeding varieties will be used in these studies.

CORESTA Press Release: Low Nicotine Tobacco Agronomic Production Practices Task Force (July 2019)

Updated November 2023