The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may reduce the nicotine content in cigarettes as a measure to make them non-addictive.

However, a recent study suggests that simply reducing the nicotine content in cigarettes may not be enough to eliminate smoking dependence, UPI reported.

The US Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, passed in 2009, permits the FDA to set standards for cigarette nicotine content. The federal organization is currently supporting research into how very low nicotine content cigarettes might function as a regulatory measure to make cigarettes non-addictive, reduce smoke exposure, and improve public health, even among people who don't want to quit smoking.

"We don't know that very low nicotine cigarettes will not' work to reduce nicotine dependence and enhance quitting, but progressively reducing nicotine content of cigarettes in the way we did, without other means of supporting smokers, did not produce the desired results," Dr. Neal Benowitz, lead author for the study, said in a statement.

For the two-year study, researchers recruited 135 smokers. Those in the test group smoked five levels of progressively lower nicotine content cigarettes over the course of one year, the lowest nicotine content cigarette being smoked for seven months. Participants in the control group smoked their usual brand of cigarettes for 12 months.

All subjects were then followed for another 12 months after returning to their own cigarettes or quitting. The idea being tested was that progressively reducing nicotine intake from cigarettes would make smokers less dependent and more likely to quit.

During the follow-up, researchers found that the lower levels of cotinine, a nicotine derivative that provides an accurate record of the nicotine intake from smoking in recent days, "in test group subjects returned to levels similar to smokers in the control group, suggesting that they had returned to their former levels of smoking," NDTV reported.

Quitting among test group members remained low: at 24 months the percent of smokers in the test group who quit smoking was not significantly higher than that of the control group.

The findings are detailed in the journal Addiction.