A Legal Action is Required to Ban Menthol Cigarettes
A legal action is required to ban menthol cigarettes
Anti-smoking groups challenged the United States government on 2nd April,2024, claiming that the administration of Vice President Joe Biden had delayed the lifting of the restriction on menthol cigarettes. Menthol, which occurs naturally in peppermint and relative plants, has been utilized heavily among Black smokers, partially because of tobacco businesses’ advertising campaigns. At the same time, it is also attractive to younger users. In April 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended banning menthol.
Health authorities planned on releasing a final regulation by last August, but after exceeding that deadline, they extended the goal date upward to the previous month. That time has come and gone, leading to the legal action to order the Food and Drug Administration, along with the government’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, to put into effect a restriction. Due to the parties at issue’s delay, tobacco firms keep using menthol cigarettes to focus on young people, women, and the Black community, all at the expense of public health, according to the complaint presented in federal court in Oakland, California. Menthol is the single cigarette flavor still permitted by a 2009 law that handed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to control tobacco.
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The African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, Action on Smoking and Health, and the National Medical Association filed the complaint. Both HHS and the Food and Drug Administration replied to calls for a response right away. The FDA recently stated that removing menthol might save 324,000 to 654,000 deaths caused by tobacco use in the United States of America over the next 40 years. During 1980 and 2018, over 10.1 million Americans started using tobacco as a result of menthol tobacco products, and 378,000 died early, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2021, menthol-flavored tobacco supplied 37% of total cigarette sales in the United States, the highest percentage since data collection started in 1963.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 81% of Black individuals who smoke tobacco products use menthol types, rather than 34% of white adults. Morningstar analyst Philip Gorham estimated last month that Altria and British American Tobacco earned over 20 percent of their sales from peppermint. In a statement issued jointly, those named as respondents on the 2nd April complaint suggested a menthol restriction would be advantageous to the Black community and criticized the administration of Vice President Biden for surrendering for the cigarettes industry’s “misleading information as well as spreading fear.
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The White House aims for a high participation rate among Black voters to help Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s comeback campaign opposite Republican Donald Trump, the previous president. In June 2020, the complainants also filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking a menthol ban. They terminated the complaint in the summer of 2022; five weeks later, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggested a ban.
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