Anonymous smoker at 4th Street Live in Louisville, KY.
Jahi Chikwendiu | The Washington Post | fake images
In its final days in power, the Biden administration is expected to officially propose a nicotine limit on cigarettes. It would be a last-minute move to fight the tobacco industry after President Joe Biden failed to deliver on a long-standing commitment to ban menthol cigarettes.
The proposal, which could arrive as soon as Monday, is not expected to include tobacco products such as e-cigarettes or nicotine replacement patches and lozenges.
“This is a Hail Mary from the Biden administration to move forward with a meaningful proposal, or at least to push one in the final days of the administration,” said Erika Sward, associate vice president of national advocacy at the American Lung Association. .
While it is the toxins released by combustible tobacco that cause chronic disease and death associated with smoking, it is the nicotine That first hooks people and then makes them come back.
No precise details of the proposal to limit nicotine levels have been published. However, multiple studies have suggested that levels may need to be reduced by up to 95% to be minimally or non-addictive.
“This would be a historic action by the FDA that has the potential to have an enormous impact on public health,” said Dr. Rose Marie Robertson, chief medical and scientific officer of the American Heart Association.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S., killing more than 480,000 people each year.
Almost all smokers started smoking during adolescence. Making cigarettes less addictive would save millions of lives, Sward said.
A 2018 study by the Food and Drug Administration estimated that a nicotine limit would result in 16 million fewer people becoming addicted to tobacco by 2060. That number would rise, the study projected, to 33.1 million by 2100.
If the Biden administration releases the proposed rule next week, it will likely still take several years to become final.
Limiting nicotine in cigarettes “would be a game-changer,” Yolonda C. Richardson, president and CEO of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in a statement to NBC News. “Few actions would do more to combat chronic diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease that greatly undermine health in the United States and which the incoming administration has indicated should be a priority to address.”
It was during President-elect Donald Trump's first term when the FDA, which has authority to regulate tobacco, first publicly discussed a plan to limit nicotine levels.
In 2017, then-FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb got things underway by unveiling a “comprehensive plan” that included an idea to “regulate the nicotine in combustible cigarettes and make them minimally or non-addictive.”
Their goal, in part, was to redirect adult smokers toward noncombustible products like e-cigarettes. The 2017 plan also included the possibility of regulating e-cigarette flavors and banning menthol products. A federal ban on most flavors went into effect in 2020; However, menthol is still on the market.
In an interview this week, Gottlieb said addressing smoking rates would have to be “at the top of the agenda” in any effort to improve public health and reduce chronic diseases.
“There is perhaps nothing more impactful we can do than dramatically reduce smoking rates in this country,” he said.
