In a last-ditch effort to reduce regional smoking costs, President Joe Biden wants to control nicotine amounts in cigarettes, but opponents claim it will have disastrous effects on both the business and violence.
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Biden’s Office of Management and Budget concluded a review of the proposed rule, the language of which has not been published, on Jan. 3. The rule may also provide a public comment period before it can be finalized, but, based on the standard comment period window of 30-90 days, it may fall on President-elect Donald Trump to adopt the rule.
Biden’s proposed law was not discussed by Trump change officials, but the FDA under the Trump administration started looking into lowering nicotine levels in smokes in 2018.
Gallup reports that while smoking rates are at historic lows, this new law does reduce them to just over 1 % by the year 2100, according to federal estimates.
Nevertheless, Richard Marianos, the former assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, blasted Biden’s last push to boycott cigarettes, suggesting the powerful bans will generate users to purchase illegal products on the black market and show a fiscal windfall for criminals at home and abroad.
” It’s a ridiculous push”, Marianos, now a professor at Georgetown University, told the Washington Examiner. ” This is a gift that Biden is giving to criminals out there, and they’re going to see it, and they’re going to capitalize on it, and there’s not a thing we’re going to be able to do except react instead of be proactive”.
He claimed that law enforcement lacks the resources and capacity to combat cigarette trafficking.
“You’re going to empower the cartels on the border. You’re going to empower the Chinese counterfeiters. You’re going to give Russian organized crime the power to sell these cigarettes because there won’t be a drop in demand, Marianos said. ” Prohibition, or any type of change in a product like this, never works. It never will work. It hasn’t worked in the past, and it’s going to create problems”.
From an economic perspective, a sweeping ban on available cigarettes would have a major fiscal impact.
According to an analysis conducted by Chmura Economics &, Analytics in December, the FDA’s proposed nicotine limit would result in a$ 24 billion loss in federal, state, and local taxes.
Furthermore, the rule could lead to more than 150, 000 , agriculture and retail , job cuts , across the nation, leading to additional negative “ripple effects” in local economies.  ,
According to Chmura, the District of Columbia and all 50 states also receive yearly payments from tobacco companies, as stated in 1998’s Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. With a TMSA ban, Binden would incur an additional loss of over$ 21 billion annually.
If the new rule were to become law, North Carolina farmers would be financially devastated, according to Ray Starling, general counsel for the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce.
We don’t have any people who are just tobacco farmers, the people need to understand. They are tobacco farmers and also produce and vegetable farmers, or wheat farmers, or they also have hogs and cattle because we’re a diversified ]agriculture ] state”, he explained. I don’t think FDA made any effort to explain that, but if you take tobacco farming out of some of these farmers ‘ heads, it will be what kind of pushes them toward being on the verge of being in the red and not the black.
If the rule were to be implemented, Starling predicted that both farmers and states would file legal action against the federal government.
” We’re all fighting in the courts now anyway. We’d be foolish to take that off the table”, he stated. You can certainly quote me on that.
The White House did not answer questions regarding criticism of Biden’s rule, but the administration ran into similar pushback during the president’s 2023 attempt to ban menthol cigarettes.
That rule, like the proposed nicotine limits, made it through an OMB review but was never adopted.
According to the federal government, the administration interpreted the regulation as an attempt to specifically restrict smoking among black and Latino people, who make up roughly 80 % of all menthol use.
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Drug policy expert Art Way told the Washington Examiner at the time,” We’ve been down this road as a community before, where you see these public health policies that are meant to be good, actually ended up putting us in a worse situation.”
” We’re going in the right direction with tobacco”, he added. ” So why do this now? Additionally, there is nothing being done in conjunction with the ban to help users quit, despite the fact that there are no other types of cessation elements in the ban. That, to me, proves that this is largely symbolic, retributive, and political. It’s well funded”.
