The Biden administration is having the FDA ban menthol and flavored cigarettes, cigarillos and flavored cigars, where mentholds in particular have been sold as "safer" than regular cigarettes and have been killing generations of Black folk in America for decades. The bad news is the policy that may not take effect for years, depending on court battles and more.
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday proposed banning menthol cigarettes, a significant step praised by leading health and civil rights groups that say the tobacco industry has a history of aggressively marketing to Black communities and causing severe harm, including higher rates of smoking-related illness and death.
The FDA also proposed prohibiting flavors in cigars, including small ones called cigarillos that are popular with teenagers.
FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, in remarks to reporters, said a ban on menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars would save lives and reduce health disparities. Expressing a sense of urgency to finalize the rule, he stressed that 480,000 people a year in the United States die of tobacco-related illnesses, making smoking the leading cause of preventable death.
Still, the effective date for the ban could easily be two years away. The FDA will accept public comments for the next few months and then write a final regulation that will include lead time for manufacturers to shutter production. Court challenges by the industry are expected and could set off a protracted legal battle.
Assuming a federal ban is finalized, it would be the most aggressive action taken by the FDA against the industry since Congress gave the agency the authority to regulate tobacco products in 2009, said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
“This is a giant step forward” in decreasing health disparities, said Carol McGruder, co-chair of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, an advocacy group that has pushed hard for the change. Because of potential litigation-related delays, she urged states and cities to adopt their own bans.
Manufacturers sold 203.7 billion cigarettes in the United States in 2020, according to the Federal Trade Commission’s annual Cigarette Report. That marked the first increase in two decades but was sharply lower than the peak in the 1980s, when annual sales exceeded 600 billion cigarettes. Menthol cigarettes make up about 36 percent of the market — and 50 percent of sales for Reynolds American, which manufactures Newport, the top-selling menthol brand.
Tobacco companies, which have long expressed opposition to a menthol ban, said a prohibition is unlikely to work and that menthol cigarettes should not be singled out.
“The scientific evidence shows no difference in the health risks associated with menthol cigarettes compared to non-menthol cigarettes, nor does it support that menthol cigarettes adversely affect initiation, dependence or cessation,” Kingsley Wheaton, chief marketing officer of British American Tobacco, which owns Reynolds, said in a statement.
Altria, which makes menthol versions of Marlboro and its other brands, warned that “taking these products out of the legal marketplace will push them into unregulated, criminal markets that don’t follow any regulations and ignore minimum age laws.”
Guy Bentley, director of consumer freedom at the Reason Foundation, said on Twitter: “Serious Volstead Act vibes here,” referring to the 1920 law designed to implement Prohibition, which failed to end sales of alcohol. The Reason Foundation is a think tank that advocates on behalf of libertarian principles.
Thursday’s move was foreshadowed almost exactly a year ago, when the FDA promised to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars within 12 months.
Menthol has deep roots in Black communities. In the 1950s, about 10 percent of Black smokers used menthol cigarettes. Today, more than 85 percent of Black smokers choose menthol cigarettes — almost three times the proportion for White smokers. Researchers and regulators have found the sharp rise was a result of aggressive marketing in Black communities — especially of menthol cigarettes — by the tobacco industry. The cigarette companies deny targeting Black communities. African Americans die of tobacco-related illnesses, including cancer and heart disease, at higher rates than other groups.
This battle will take years, and I expect major interference by Republicans along the way. But there's no doubt that tobacco kills nearly a half-million Americans a year, and it's the right thing to do.
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