The Trump administration has snuffed out a plan to ban menthol cigarettes, handing a victory to the tobacco industry after it waged a massive and at times deceptive lobbying campaign.
The FDA proposed banning menthol cigarettes in 2022, amid pressure from groups including the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Lung Association, and the NAACP, which noted that menthol cigarettes, long aggressively marketed to Black Americans, have a disproportionate and deadly effect on their health.
Tobacco allies argued banning menthol would be racist.
To fight the proposal, tobacco companies—in particular Reynolds American, which earns a big chunk of revenue from its mentholated Newport cigarette brand—turned that argument on its head, asserting that banning menthols would be racist because Black people tend to smoke them.
These arguments were not advanced directly by Reynolds, but by organizations and people who appeared be quietly funded by the tobacco giant.
“The Biden administration is proposing a federal ban on menthol cigarettes that could disproportionately impact Black and brown communities,” a 2023 ad paid for by a shadowy organization called the Alliance for Fair and Equitable Policy—a group which, Mother Jones has reported, appears to be indirectly funded by Reynolds. “If implemented, the ban could fuel an illicit market leading to increases in police interactions and incarcerations,” the ad continued.
Evidence suggests that Reynolds was also behind a group that ran ads making the surprising and almost wholly unsupported claim that banning menthols would empower drug cartels and foreign terrorist groups, including Hezbollah.
But it was the argument that a ban would unfairly impact Black Americans that proved particularly effective—especially as polls showed Democrats’ electoral hopes were endangered by falling support among Black voters in 2024.
The Biden administration held dozens of meetings with people opposing the menthol rule, including representatives of nominally independent groups that have received funding from cigarette makers as well as lobbyists directly employed by tobacco companies. In December 2023 and March 2024, the White House put off issuing a final rule that would have set a ban in motion, punting the decision until after the 2024 election. Donald Trump’s victory all but assured the proposal would be dropped.
As Bloomberg reported on Friday, the rule banning menthol was listed as “withdrawn” in a regulatory posting this week. Shares of cigarette makers rose on the news.
Health groups that supported the ban appear set to now focus on pushing local menthol restrictions.
“We continue to strongly support eliminating menthol cigarettes to end the tobacco industry’s decades-long, predatory marketing of these products to kids, Black Americans and other communities,” said Yolanda Richardson, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. “It is deeply disappointing that a final rule was not issued in a timely manner. We will continue to build support for eliminating menthol cigarettes nationwide. In the meantime, it is more critical than ever that states and cities step up their efforts to end the sale of menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products.”
