The Biden Administration says that the long-awaited ban on menthol cigarettes will not happen until further notice. Since it was said that there might be a ban, there has been a lot of opposition and debate about the choice.
“This rule has gotten significant attention, and the public comment period has yielded a huge amount of feedback, including from different parts of the criminal justice and civil rights movements,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said.
Becerra said it was clear they need to talk about more things before they can pass a law against this, which will take a lot more time.
A chief of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Robert Califf, said he hoped a choice would be made by the end of the year. “It’s very important to us, so I really hope so,” he said.
Califf said, “From the point of view of the FDA and me as a person, based on what I’ve seen in my life, we’re talking about probably 600,000 deaths that could be avoided over the next 30 years.” He went on to say that most of these people would be Black Americans because that’s who tobacco companies want to reach.
Derick Johnson, president of the NAACP, called the decision by the Biden government to put off the ban a “blow to the Black community.” They went on to say that over the next forty years, the ban would save the lives of up to 255,000 black Americans.
The FDA first suggested two years ago that menthol cigarettes should be banned, but people immediately spoke out in favor of and against the bill. All of the businesses that were against the ban said it would “cost them billions.”
