(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is poised to release initial data from a landmark study into how Americans use tobacco products, but researchers expect many key questions about e-cigarettes to remain unanswered.
The five-year Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study of about 46,000 people, begun in 2011, is expected to provide a wealth of data about smoking behavior that could shape regulations ranging from warning labels and advertising restrictions to new product approvals.
"It is going to provide the most fine-grain, comprehensive, highest quality data on tobacco use that has ever been collected in the United States," said Stanton Glantz, a tobacco control expert at the University of California, San Francisco.