The rule says that the effort to lower nicotine in tobacco products would reduce people's addiction to smoking and give people a better shot at quitting.

"Lowering nicotine levels to minimally addictive or non-addictive levels would decrease the likelihood that future generations of young people become addicted to cigarettes and help more currently addicted smokers to quit."

Nicotine is the chemical in tobacco products that is highly addictive.

The chemical can change the way the brain works, making people crave more of it, according to the FDA.

Studies show that when the nicotine content of cigarettes is reduced, people don't seem to smoke more to compensate for the missing nicotine.

"If we could keep them from being addicted in the first place, that would be good and this has the potential to really produce a dramatic change in tobacco use," Robertson said.

About 480,000 people in the US die from smoking-related disease, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA estimates reducing nicotine levels could prevent more than 33 million from becoming regular smokers and about 5 million additional smokers would quit within a year of lowering nicotine levels and 134 million years of life would be gained.

"Because they are low on nicotine, does not mean they are low in anything else."

So, there would still need to be a public health effort to get people to quit, Robertson said.