Breaking: Biden FDA Releases Proposal to Limit Nicotine in Cigarettes

The FDA on Wednesday formally released its proposal to limit the nicotine content of cigarettes, in a move it claims will make cigarettes less addictive.

Nicotine would be limited to levels that "could no longer create and sustain this addiction among people who smoke," according to the agency’s 334-page proposal

In its report on Wednesday, the FDA predicted that reducing nicotine would help some 13 million smokers quit the habit within one year and that another 48 million young people would never take up the habit because cigarettes would become nonaddictive.

Critics tell National Review the proposed FDA rule would have many of the same unintended consequences as the administration’s abandoned menthol ban: it would turn over the currently-legal cigarette market to bad actors in the illicit market including China and drug cartels and, in doing so, it could hurt the economy and throttle tax revenue.

But because the rule has been formally introduced with less than a week left of the administration, it is unlikely to be enacted anytime soon. Even if the Trump administration — which has not commented on the proposal — were to pick up the ban, it would likely face legal challenges from big tobacco companies.

The rule has been in the works since 2022, when an FDA paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested a nicotine product standard could drop the smoking rate to just 1.4 percent by 2100.

"The biggest concern is it's going to expand the black market or the illicit trade market more than ever before," said former ATF assistant director Rich Marianos, who called the would-be rule a "gift" to criminal organizations from the current administration.

The rule, if enacted, would allow high value targets to make more money by pushing these products on the street, he said, arguing that the drop in nicotine would not get people to stop smoking, but only to smoke more and to likely seek out products from the illicit market to contend with the increase in price of having to double or triple cigarette intake to get the same amount of nicotine. 

"If I can't get booze at the store, where am I buying it from? The truck's on the street. The guys that are selling it out of the soda shops. We've gone through this exercise. We're smarter than this, but this administration thinks we're all stupid," he said.

In fact, high taxes in several blue states have led to an already-booming black market for cigarettes. In New York, 54 percent of cigarettes consumed in 2022 were smuggled into the state. Nearly half of cigarettes consumed in California and New Mexico were not purchased legally either.

And Americans have already seen how the FDA's restrictions on vaping has impacted the market: as many as 98 percent of vaping products sold in the U.S. are illicit.

The proposed rule could strain already lagging law enforcement resources, pulling agents of the law away from "real crime" to "something that doesn't have to take place."

"If this does not pass, we concentrate on bad guys with guns or … terrorists that are making bombs or driving through festivals. Can you imagine if this goes through and now we have to tank counterfeit nicotine products?" 

"This is another attempt by this administration to decide what's in the best interest of the community rather than what we need," he concluded.

Then there's also the economic component. The Tax Foundation predicts the policy would effectively act as a prohibition on cigarettes. If the lower nicotine standard were to take effect and reduce legal sales by 90 percent, tax revenues would drop by roughly $33 billion per year. 

A separate report from Chmura Economics & Analytics suggests the rule could result in a loss of $8 billion in federal tax revenue and $16 billion in state and local tax revenue, coupled with the loss of more than 154,000 jobs. The national economy would be looking at a loss of $30.6 billion per year, the report found last month. 

In fact, there have been no studies to suggest low nicotine cigarettes are healthier than traditional smokes and, if implemented, the rule would make the U.S. the first in the world with such a restriction. The administration is pushing the controversial rule at a time when smoking rates are at historic lows, according to Gallup.

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Biden FDA Releases Proposal to Limit Nicotine in Cigarettes

Because the rule has been formally introduced with less than a week left of the administration, it is unlikely to ... READ MORE

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