Last week the Biden White House announced it was delaying a decision on the FDA’s well-reasoned product standards that would end the use of menthol in cigarettes and cigars, sparking outrage from leaders in the African American community:
The White House is ignoring the real human cost of delay. Based on the Biden FDA’s analysis, every month delay in implementing the proposed menthol standard results in 29,403 new cigarette smokers. That’s 118,000 new customers for RJ Reynolds, Philip Morris and the other tobacco companies between now and March.
That makes it easy to understand the companies’ investment in buying allies to try and kill the rule.
But it doesn’t justify the delay, particularly from a White House that claims to care about health disparities in general and African Americans in particular.
After all, they won’t know anything more about the science or politics of methol 4 months from now than they did last week.
The tobacco companies are organizing and financing the opposition
Biden caved to tobacco industry-organized pressure from groups, led by Reverend Al Sharpton, that claimed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that ending the sale of menthol cigarettes and cigars would cost him votes in the African American community. Sharpton, the police groups and black press supporting the industry continue to refuse to disclose how much money they have pocketed from Big Tobacco.
The industry messengers are increasingly isolated. While the tobacco companies have a long history of buying silence and complicity among African American organizations, but, as illustrated in the video above, today important Black organizations put the health of their constituents over the industry’s money. As the New York Times reported,
Many other Black organizations, including a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus, have dismissed the policing argument, calling it a cynical attempt to exploit trauma and distract from the harm of cigarettes.
“What we’re seeing now,” said Patrice Willoughby, vice president of policy and legislative affairs at the N.A.A.C.P., “is the reaction of a very well-organized industry that has been peddling death to the Black community.”
Biden promised to prioritize health over tobacco industry claims
Biden’s decision to delay the decision on menthol is all the more surprising because at an Iowa campaign stop on January 6, 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden said he would prioritize health over business and eliminate vaping if the evidence showed damage to lungs and other bad effects. (E-cigs do damage lungs and much more.) I mistakenly even said on this blog, “So the FDA doesn’t have to worry about the President [Biden] blocking them as Obama and Trump did.”
Watch what Biden said:
The same old discredited industry arguments
Biden’s action is all the more surprising because the White House swallowed the same old generic arguments Big Tobacco uses against all tobacco control measures: crime, discrimination, economic harm (although never mentioning the harm to Big Tobacco sales and profits). These dire predictions didn’t materialize then and won’t materialize now.
Here are examples, of tobacco industry advertising in political campaigns to prohibit the sale of flavored tobacco (2018), tobacco taxes (1988) and clean indoor air (1978). None of the industry’s dire predictions came true.
Menthol bans work
The fact that the industry fights menthol bans so hard, lobbying against laws ending the sale of flavored tobacco products — forcing referrenda, and suing — shows how effective these bans are. They help people quit smoking (and vaping and using other tobacco products) and reducing initiation (San Francisco, California, Massachusetts, other states, Canada). Indeed, the actual benefits have often been bigger than health advocates predicted.
The Biden White House should consider the fact that the industry has lost the referrenda it forced trying to overturn state and local flavored tobacco bans despite overspending the health groups. That is practical evidence of the high level of public support for getting rid of menthol and other flavors.
The White House interference also reinforces the importance of health advocates continuing to pass local and state laws ending the sale of all flavored tobacco products. That’s where the real progress is happening.
For more information
Check out the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council website for lots more resources on menthol, including instructions on how to call the White House.
Stanton Glantz blog 