With Donald Trump returning to the presidency, many industries, including tobacco are betting on the president elect’s next steps.
Following Trump’s victory, tobacco stocks jumped, the Wall Street Journal reported Nov. 6. “London-listed British American Tobacco rose as much as 4%,” the media outlet reported.
The Biden Administration’s proposed menthol cigarette ban “may have been ‘sleeper issue’ in North Carolina” when it came to Trump’s win in the swing state, the Washington Examiner reported on Nov. 12.
“Polls ahead of the election indicated Black voters may be less likely to support Harris’s candidacy if she advanced any sort of restrictions on menthol cigarettes,” the report said.
Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by 3.4 points in the Tar Heel state, the Examiner reported.
“The tobacco crop, the manufacturing of cigarettes and the retailing of those are an incredibly important part of our economy in North Carolina still,” Ray Starling, senior advisor for Our Ag Future, a North Carolina Chamber of Commerce initiative aimed at preserving North Carolina’s agricultural heritage and empowering farmers, told CSP Daily News.
Starling said that tobacco is still a critical part of the state’s agricultural economy and that these issues made an impact with voters in North Carolina.
“Anytime you talk about taking just a farm-gate value crop that is worth a half a billion dollars and suggest that you are going to pursue a regulatory path that takes that off the charts, that is a story that needs to be told, Starling said. “We believe that in this campaign we were able to do that.”
Photo courtesy of Our Ag Future
Before the election, yard signs that said, “North Carolina still has pride in tobacco,” started popping up in windows of gas stations and tobacco shops, Chase Gaines, director of special projects for Our Ag Future, told CSP. It certainly is a sleeper issue for anyone outside the North Carolina regions where tobacco is grown, he said.
In the nation’s capital, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf is watching what next steps President-elect Trump will take regarding the agency as a whole, online media outlet statnews.com reported.
“I think we just don’t know what’s going to happen,” Califf said at the nonprofit Friends of Cancer Research conference, statnews.com reported.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, is in the executive branch. Califf appointed the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) Director Brian King in 2022.
In September, Trump said on his social media platform that he would “save vaping again!”
Trump’s announcement was a pivot from his position on vape products during his first presidency. In 2019, Trump called vaping a “problem,” with his administration saying it would go after all flavored vapes.
In 2020, Trump revised his all flavored vape action with the FDA barring most flavors, including fruit and mint, from unauthorized cartridge-based e-cigarettes until companies go through the premarket tobacco application (PMTA) process.
Meanwhile, Yolonda Richardson, president and CEO at Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, on Nov. 8 said that “as the country begins the necessary process of changing presidential administrations following this year’s election, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the Global Health Advocacy Incubator reaffirm our fundamental commitment to a strong, data-driven public health system that meets the needs of all communities.”
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