Now that the war to make human lives in America as unpleasant as possible is fairly obvious, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is looking to strip perfectly legal tobacco products from the shelves. Specifically, they are looking to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars with the argument that the artificial flavorings lure young African-Americans into joining the ranks of smokers.
The proposal, which comes a year after the agency announced the plan, still needs to be finalized and could take years to implement as it is likely to face stiff opposition from big tobacco.
“The proposed rules would help prevent children from becoming the next generation of smokers and help adult smokers quit,” said the health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra.
For decades, menthol cigarettes have been in the crosshairs of anti-smoking groups who have argued that they contribute to disproportionate health burdens on Black communities and play a role in luring young people into smoking.
Menthol cigarettes, banned in many states including California and Massachusetts, account for more than a third of the industry’s overall market share in the United States, even as overall smoking rates have been declining in the country.
In 2019, there were more than 18.5m menthol cigarette smokers ages 12 and older in the country, with particularly high rates of use by youth, young adults, and African American and other racial and ethnic groups, the agency said.
This writer has known a number of people who have quit smoking with the help of menthol cigarettes. Why is it a matter of debate?
This move, of course, will affect big tobacco negatively, and the statements from the companies overseas are already coming.
“We believe harm reduction, not prohibition, is the better path forward,” Altria said in a statement.
“Taking these products out of the legal marketplace will push them into unregulated, criminal markets that don’t follow any regulations and ignore minimum age laws.”
Such is life in the gulag formerly known as the free United States of America. More and more we’re seeing government overreach like this.
Please make sure to share our website and articles with your friends, family, and fellow patriots to help us spread the truth!
Let us know your thoughts on this liberal progressive BS in the comment section…
568
432
4k
Well of course, Dems are pushing Marijuana which has the benefit if destroying short term memory .
After years of consideration on the subject of tobacco products being marketed to the public for human consumption I have come to this conclusion: I ask the question “If this were a new product would it be approved for human consumption?” The answer is obviously no. We know that ingestion of tobacco products cause mouth, gum, tongue, throat and lung cancer; emphysema and a host of other problems. Other products have been banned for the same effect on the human body. For example matches originally used white phosphorus which caused high rates of nasal cancer. Red phosphorus was substituted (that… Read more »