Biden Administration Delays Plan to Ban Menthol Cigarettes (1)

President Joe Biden’s administration is delaying action on a proposed rule to ban menthol cigarettes, which some activists have said would unfairly target Black smokers.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Friday his agency continues to weigh “an immense amount of feedback,” including from civil rights activists and criminal justice reform advocates. “It’s clear that there are still more conversations to have and that will take significantly more time,” Becerra said in a statement.

Biden faces reelection in November, and he could lose support from some Black voters if he moved to ban menthol products. Biden’s advisers grew wary of the proposal after having discussions about it with civil rights groups, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Shares of Altria Group Inc., which sells the Marlboro and Benson & Hedges brands in the US, initially jumped before slumping less than 1%. US depositary receipts of British American Tobacco Plc sank a similar amount. While the news takes near-term risk away for tobacco companies, a ban could resurface after the election, Jefferies analyst Owen Bennett said in a Friday research note.

“It is clear from the reporting and the statement from HHS that the Biden Administration is not abandoning these plans permanently at this stage,” Bennett said, adding that if Donald Trump wins, a ban would be less likely.

Related: Altria Calls on FDA for More Enforcement of Vape Competition

Altria didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment. Reynolds American, a unit of British American Tobacco and the maker of Newport and Camel cigarettes, said that “there are more effective ways to transition adult smokers away from cigarettes permanently” than banning menthols. It added that “ineffective bans do little to responsibly support changes in adult smoker behavior.”

Tobacco companies have sought to transition from cigarettes, which are becoming less popular amid high taxes and adverse health effects, to products they say are safer nicotine alternatives. There was concern among industry analysts that a menthol ban could hurt Altria’s earnings and put its dividend at risk. Reynolds American and Altria have said their sales were hurt by rules in California, where menthols are already banned.

Missed Deadlines

The FDA has repeatedly missed deadlines to take action on menthol. The decision comes just weeks after public health groups sued the FDA for a second time for failing to follow through on its plan to ban menthol by the end of March. The lawsuit claimed that the agency had unreasonably and unlawfully delayed regulations that would save lives.

Health groups came out quickly to condemn the move.

“This decision prioritizes politics over lives, especially Black lives,” Yolonda Richardson, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in an emailed statement, citing a poll carried out late last year that shows that Black voters in fact supporta menthol ban.

“Tobacco industry arguments have prevailed over public health,” Laurent Huber, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, said. Huber’s organization is committed to fighting for a menthol ban through its existing lawsuit against the FDA.

The American Lung Association said it was “deeply disappointed that the president is delaying these rules. More kids will start to smoke, and more people who would otherwise quit will not.”

Mark A. Mitchell of the National Medical Association, which is the largest national organization representing African American physicians, said “the scare tactics of the tobacco industry have contributed to this delay and we are concerned about that.”

“We’ll continue to have Black children targeted, and the health and lives of our patients will be ruined as long as the administration continues to delay this total ban on menthol,” he said in a statement.

Premature Deaths

More than 10 million Americans took up smoking because of menthol cigarettes between 1980 and 2018, and around 378,000 people died prematurely, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Menthol is especially popular among Black smokers due to tobacco companies’ aggressive marketing in Black neighborhoods and sponsorship of events.

The FDA banned all cigarette flavors other than menthol in passage of the 2009 Tobacco Control Act and left menthol as the only cigarette flavor still marketed in the US. The agency was instructed at the time to review whether menthol cigarettes were more of a health risk than regular cigarettes. That review was originally expected to take just a few years.

The Wall Street Journal reported the administration’s decision earlier.

(Updates share moves and adds reactions from health groups and analyst voice)

--With assistance from Nyah Phengsitthy, Damian Garde and Jennifer Jacobs.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Fiona Rutherford in New York at frutherford@bloomberg.net;
Tiffany Kary in New York at tkary@bloomberg.net;
Madison Muller in New York at mmuller84@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Jonathan Roeder at jroeder@bloomberg.net

Jordan Fabian, Anne Cronin

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