U.S. President Joe Biden speaks after signing a bill providing billions of dollars in new aid to Ukraine for its war with Russia, at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 24, 2024.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
The Biden Administration has delayed plans to ban menthol cigarettes, a proposal announced by the Food and Drug Administration years ago.
“There are still more conversations to be had and that will take much longer,” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement Friday.
The FDA announced plans to ban menthol tobacco cigarettes in 2021, followed by proposed rules for the ban in 2022. The move was aimed at improving the health of those most likely to smoke them, including children and African Americans.
According to the FDA, nearly 85% of black smokers use menthol cigarettes, compared to only 30% of white smokers. Black men have the highest lung cancer death rate in the United States, and both Black men and women are much less likely to be diagnosed with the disease at an early stage, when it is often more treatable, than Americans. whites.
The proposed ban, and now the delay, has raised questions about the effect it could have on Black voters months before a contentious presidential election.
The ban has already been delayed at least once, and promises that it will be enacted late last year come and go. At the time, the White House quietly updated its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website to reflect that any final ban on menthol would not come until at least March.
At the time of the December delay, an official with a national public health group working to remove the products from the market told NBC News they were “deeply concerned” that the ban would not take effect before the 2024 election.
“Everything becomes harder to do in an election year because people are distracted and bandwidth runs out,” the official said in December.
Becerra's statement did not indicate if or when the Biden Administration would enact the ban, and did not provide further details about discussions about it.
After the delay was announced Friday afternoon, health and anti-smoking advocates began expressing frustration.
“Two full years after releasing proposed rules backed by extensive scientific evidence, and more than a decade since the FDA began reviewing menthol cigarettes, the administration has failed to take decisive action to remove these deadly and addictive products from the market,” American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown said in a statement. “The administration's inaction is allowing the tobacco industry to continue to aggressively market these products and attract and addict new users.”
