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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is moving forward with plans to mandate lower nicotine levels in cigarettes in the final days of President Biden’s term, according to a new report, which critics say could cause Americans to smoke more and fuel organized crime cartels.
The plan, which is touted as a way to reduce the ability of cigarettes to hook casual users, cleared a regulatory review last week by the Food and Drug Administration, the agency told Fox News.
But opponents argue that the change could cause current smokers to use more cigarettes to compensate for the lower nicotine levels, negatively impacting their health, and that the plan could open an opportunity for black-market sales of standard-strength cigarettes.
“Biden’s ban is a gift with a bow and balloons to organized crime cartels with it, whether it’s cartels, Chinese organized crime, or Russian mafia,” Rich Marianos, a former assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told Fox News.
“It’s going to keep America smoking, and it’s going to make the streets more violent,” Marianos said.
It’s unclear if the FDA will issue a proposed rule outlining the looming regulation before Biden leaves office on Jan. 20.
Plans for the reform were announced in 2022 and the formal proposed rule had been expected in 2023. It’s unclear what accounts for the delay, though the FDA similarly has been slow to implement a ban on menthol cigarettes, which also was unveiled in 2022.
A proposed rule would be followed by a public notice and comment period, during which supporters and opponents would present their arguments ahead of a final decision.
The process almost certainly would bleed into President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, putting the final decision under control of the Republican’s nominees such as Health and Human Services secretary-designee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA commissioner-designee Marty Makary.
Cigarettes are a leading preventable cause of death due to their contribution to cancer and heart disease risks — with an estimated 480,000 Americans dying per year due to tobacco use, with smokers having a life expectancy roughly 10 years shorter than non-smokers.
As of 2022, 11.6% of American adults used cigarettes, according to the federal National Health Interview Survey.
“The proposed rule, ‘Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products,’ is displaying in the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) ROCIS system as having completed regulatory review on January 3,” the FDA told Fox.
“As the FDA has previously said, a proposed product standard to establish a maximum nicotine level to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes and certain other combusted tobacco products, when finalized, is estimated to be among the most impactful population-level actions in the history of U.S. tobacco product regulation.”
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in 2022 that the plan would help both smokers and potential future cigarette users.
“Lowering nicotine levels to minimally addictive or non-addictive levels would decrease the likelihood that future generations of young people become addicted to cigarettes and help more currently addicted smokers to quit,” Califf said.
Many cigarette users have transitioned to other nicotine-delivery options that are popularly believed to pose fewer risks to their health.
The National Health Interview Survey survey found in 2022 that roughly 6% of American adults used e-cigarettes and 2.1% used smokeless tobacco such as the increasingly popular Zyn and On! oral pouches.
Nicotine policy has for years focused on the use by minors who then potentially become lifelong addicts — and in Trump’s first term, the FDA restricted e-cigarette flavors in 2020 after a heated policy debate in which Trump himself expressed concern about less-safe flavored imports.
“Isn’t that going to be just sold, you know, illegally, or somebody is going to open up a shop in China and ship it in with flavors and you don’t know what standard you’re getting?” Trump said during a tense 2019 Cabinet Room discussion that he hosted between supporters and opponents of a flavor ban.
Ultimately, US manufactures largely complied with the flavor ban — even after fighting the new policies in court — while smoke shops across the country continued to sell Chinese-imported flavored e-cigarettes, such as the popular Chinese-made Elf Bar.
The Biden administration in 2022 said it would go a step forward and ban the US-made Juul e-cigarette, despite the company voluntarily phasing out most flavors of its cartridge system. However, that ban was paused pending an appeal, and Juul remains widely used.
Product bans often provoke concern about the generation of a black market. Crushing organized crime has, concurrently with tobacco policy debates, been cited as a top reason to end the criminalization of marijuana, which is now allowed for recreational use in about half of US states.
The FDA did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment on its timetable for cigarette nicotine level reductions.
