The Food and Drug Administration’s renewed push to regulate e-cigarettes could interfere with the Biden administration’s plans to ban menthol-flavored tobacco products, a long-sought goal of public health groups
Packs of Newport cigarettes are seen on a shelf in a grocery store on April 29, 2021, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images.
It could also present an early challenge for Robert Califf, who President Joe Biden nominated on Friday to lead the agency. Menthol is one of the most popular flavors of tobacco products. It “helps the poison go down quicker,” said Erika Sward, the assistant vice president of national advocacy at the American Lung Association. By coating the throat with a soothing mint-like flavor, menthol masks the harsh flavor of burning tobacco.
In 2013, over a dozen public health groups petitioned FDA to ban the flavor based on ample data showing the harm it caused — particularly among Black Americans. They disproportionately smoke menthol cigarettes compared to other demographics, largely because of decades of targeted marketing campaigns by tobacco companies. Some of the groups behind the petition sued FDA in 2020 to force it to act on menthol.
FDA said in April that it was beginning to draw up a proposal to ban menthol, in response to the citizen petition and subsequent lawsuit. At the same time, the agency is scrambling to assess the remaining applications from companies that want to continue marketing e-cigarettes and other novel tobacco products introduced since 2007.
“We didn't want to create a marketplace where an adult smoker goes into the store and could buy a mentholated cigarette but couldn't buy a mentholated e-cigarette,” Gottlieb told POLITICO. “I wanted them to be parity between e-cigarettes and cigarettes, so we can still use them as tools to try to migrate those smokers off … tobacco.”
Even if lawmakers and White House officials supported other areas of Gottlieb’s tobacco regulation, he said “the efforts that I opened up on menthol probably ignited the most intense political fight that I had while I was at the agency on tobacco.”in the U.S., and although smoking rates have gone down in general, menthol smoking rates have increased.That’s why historically, the tobacco industry has worked tirelessly to block the ban of menthol cigarettes.
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