FDA announces its intention to reduce amount of nicotine allowed in cigarettes

In a bid to drastically reduce the number of U.S. deaths attributed to smoking each year, the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday unveiled a tobacco regulation plan that is notable for its breadth and simplicity: strip cigarettes of their power over users by reducing their nicotine content to nonaddictive levels.

Breaking ranks with an administration bent on scrapping federal regulations, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb described "one possible policy scenario" that would set a limit of 0.4 milligrams of nicotine per gram of tobacco. That's about 97 percent lower than the nicotine levels in typical cigarettes.

If such a policy were implemented, the number of Americans who quit smoking would be expected to increase by roughly