A group of 21 attorneys general is urging President Joe Biden to “act quickly” and implement the Food and Drug Administration’s proposals to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, and New York Attorney General Letitia James are leading the group and submitted a letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Jan. 16.
“Menthol is added to make a deadly and distasteful product more palatable, with disproportionate health impacts in Black communities where tobacco companies have aggressively marketed menthol tobacco,” Tong said. “I join civil rights leaders, public health experts, and attorneys general from across the country in urging the Biden Administration to prohibit menthol cigarette and flavored cigar sales.”
Attorneys general from Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and District of Columbia also signed the letter.
The attorneys general note thatbanning menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars would bring the country closer to achieving the Cancer Moonshot, President Biden’s historic push “to end cancer as we know it.”
Along with this latest attempt to voice support on the proposed menthol cigarette ban, industry groups and lawmakers in Congress are offering pushback saying these rules will add to the illicit tobacco market and affect convenience-store sales.
The National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), which represents more than 150,000 c-stores in the United States, penned Nov. 8 a letter calling on the President to reconsider the FDA’s proposals to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars.
In the letter, Doug Kantor, general counsel for NACS, said the bans “are likely to usher in an array of negative unintended consequences by adding to the already burgeoning illicit tobacco market, moving business away from legitimate companies to unregulated foreign producers, and removing the consumer guardrails put in place by responsible sellers like the convenience store industry.”
According to the Biden administration’s Fall 2023 Unified Agenda, the expected publication date for final rules on banning menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars has been pushed to March.
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