The Biden administration has abandoned its acknowledging that heavy pushback from black Americans seen as a critical voting bloc for the president’s 2024 re-election effort influenced the decision.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra announced the reversal of a proposed ban on the minty cigarettes and other flavored tobaccos on Friday. The administration’s reversal of course was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
“This rule has garnered historic attention and the public comment period has yielded an immense amount of feedback, including from various elements of the civil rights and criminal justice movement, Becerra said in a statement.
“It’s clear that there are still more conversations to have, and that will take significantly more time.”
An FDA spokesman told The Post in a separate statement that the agency “remains committed to issuing the tobacco product standards for menthol in cigarettes and characterizing flavors in cigars,” adding that “these product standards remain at the top of our priorities.”
Becerra had said as recently as November that “the proposed rules represent an important step to advance health equity by significantly reducing tobacco-related health disparities.”
Polls show Biden, 81, has been hemorrhaging support among black Americans who carried him and other Democrats to victory four years ago.
Just 68% of black voters, 50% of voters under the age of 30 and 48% of Hispanic voters support a second Biden term, the WSJ found in a poll released earlier this month.
The Democratic incumbent won more than nine out of 10 black voters in 2020, according to AP VoteCast.
Roughly four-fifths of black adults who smoke cigarettes favor menthol brands, compared to just 34% of white adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Anti-smoking zealots and civil rights groups have targeted minty smokes for decades as a vice that disproportionately affects black communities and lures young people with ease into a harmful habit.
But prominent black political voices like Rev. Al Sharpton had also lobbied FDA Commissioner Robert Califf for nearly two years to drop the proposed menthol ban.
“Menthol prohibitions will create illicit markets and more police interactions, especially in minority communities,” Sharpton’s National Action Network wrote in a June 2022 letter to Califf that was obtained by The Post.
“NAN is uniquely qualified to offer a valuable civil rights perspective on our concerns and the unintended consequences.”
Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, also fired off a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in November, expressing concerns about the FDA’s rule leading to “increased negative encounters with police in communities of color.”
“I do not encourage, support, or promote smoking,” Carr wrote in the letter, also obtained by The Post. “However, while the intentions behind the FDA’s proposed menthol cigarette ban are to improve the health of Black [sic] people, the potential for it to hurt Blacks [sic] and Hispanics cannot be overlooked.”
Eric Garner, 43, died in July 2014 after a NYPD officer placed him in an illegal chokehold while attempting to arrest the Staten Island resident for selling untaxed loose cigarettes.
Biden’s expected prohibition also caught the eye of House Republican lawmakers, who argued the FDA’s plan would create a “huge opportunity” for Mexican cartels’ smuggling operations.
Nine GOP members led by Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV) warned the White House in December the ban would further allow the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) to use profits from smuggling flavored tobacco products “to fund their fentanyl operation in the US.”
The FDA delayed its decision last fall, citing the need to hear input from groups affected by the proposed rule — leading to a slight dip in shares sold of Altria Group, British America Tobacco and Philip Morris International, which doesn’t sell in the US.
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