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Public health advocates have long sought a menthol ban. When the landmark Tobacco Control Act passed in 2009, which gave the FDA authority to regulate tobacco products, menthol was exempted from tobacco flavorings to be banned.

Exceptional rank public health groups and a cadre of former US cabinet health secretaries who have recorded 47,000 Black deaths each year from smoking-related diseases. Allowing menthol cigarettes to remain on the market “harms the financial interests of tobacco companies and discriminates against African Americans,” health ministers wrote in a letter to the Senate as tobacco control legislation passes Congress.

The law put the matter in the hands of the FDA and its advisors, who are stepping forward. In 2011, agency consultants said removing menthol cigarettes from the market would benefit public health, but stopped short call for a ban. Two years later, the FDA said that menthol makes it easier to start smoking and harder to quit. looking for comments on “potential regulation”.

The FDA commissioner at the time, Dr. Half a decade passed before Scott Gottlieb, announced He intended to demand a ban on menthol cigarettes in 2018. He left the agency without achieving this goal. Last year, the agency said It would reinstate the ban as well as removing flavors from the small, mass-produced cigars popular with black and Latino youth.

White House records show recent meetings With supporters of the ban, including the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Public Law Health Center and others officials a review Canada’s experience of banning menthol cigarettes in 2017 led to 59 percent of menthol smokers buying unflavored cigarettes, with 20 percent of menthol smokers quitting, and nearly the same proportion continuing to buy on Indigenous reservations where they could still be sold.

Business groups, including Americans for Tax Reform and the Tax Foundation Warning to White House officials losing federal and state tax dollars – as much as $6.6 billion in the first year of the menthol cigarette ban.

While supporters of the ban said it was an important step toward reducing disease inequalities in the United States, the step to some extent divided Black communities. Reverend Al Sharpton has sharply criticized this and has recently provided a meeting with King & Spalding, a lobbying firm with White House officials widespread He filed a defense of cigarette manufacturer RAI Services Company, formerly known as RJ Reynolds.