FDA Menthol Cigs and Flavored Cigars Plans on Track
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is on track to propose rules prohibiting menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes and prohibiting all characterizing flavors (including menthol) in cigars by spring.
The FDA’s actions “are an important opportunity to achieve significant, meaningful public health gains and advance health equity,” said FDA Center for Tobacco Products Director Mitch Zeller in a statement. “For far too long, specific populations have been targeted and disproportionately impacted by tobacco use, especially when it comes to characterizing flavors that entice them to start and keep smoking.”
In April 2021, the FDA announced its commitment to advancing these two tobacco product standards. Then in November, attorneys for the FDA appeared in court as anti-tobacco groups accused the agency of failing to implement a ban on menthol cigarettes.
The National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) cautioned that banning menthol in cigarettes and all characterizing flavors in cigars would boost black market sales.
“Menthol makes up more than 37 percent of the tobacco market,” Lyle Beckwith, NACS senior vice president of government relations, said in an article published on the association’s website. “That demand will not go away due to a ban. NACS is on record opposing menthol bans as we believe illicit vendors will quickly source and begin selling foreign and counterfeit menthol cigarettes. Illicit vendors do not verify age, do not collect and remit taxes, and they sell other illegal products beyond just menthol cigarettes.”
In the convenience retailing channel, cigarettes contributed 27.79 percent of in-store sales in 2020, according to the NACS State of the Industry Report of 2020 Data. Other tobacco products, a category which includes cigars, accounted for 6.9 percent of in-store sales in 2020.
After reviewing and considering comments to its proposed rules, the FDA could then proceed to issue final product standards, which would become enforceable once in effect.