Do you want to lose midterms? This is one way to lose midterms!
President Joe Biden’s administration wants to ban menthol cigarettes. It likely won’t happen until 2024, but the FDA took another step forward when it published the rules.
We’re not stupid. We all know this is a movement toward banning tobacco. You know that’s what Big Brother wants to do.
From The Wall Street Journal:
It’s for the common good, you guys. The government wants to help you:
The policy could save hundreds of thousands of lives, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said Thursday. He said in his career as an intensive-care cardiologist, he had seen many people die of smoking-related diseases.“We know the majority of smokers want to quit,” Dr. Califf said on a call with reporters. Prohibiting menthol in cigarettes, he said, will give them “a better shot.”
The Wall Street Journal buried an important detail: “In the U.S., 81% of Black smokers and 51% of Hispanic smokers used menthols in 2020, compared with 30% of white smokers, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.”
Big Brother: We’re going to help you guys by banning something you enjoy.
They’ll likely go to regular cigarettes. They’re addicted to the nicotine, not the menthol.
If you don’t know by now that smoking is bad for you and could give you lung cancer, then…I have no words for you.
I’ve been smoke-free for over 16 months! I have friends who still smoke. They know the risks, and it’s their choice.
The move to ban menthol cigarettes all started in…you guessed it! 2009 with President Barack Obama in the White House. But, as you will see, President Donald Trump’s administration was no better. His FDA commissioner wanted to go through with it, and Trump supported him.
But Trump’s administration put away the idea when the commissioner left in 2017.
Obama gave the FDA regulatory authority over the tobacco industry in 2009 when he signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act:
The law banned candy, fruit and spice flavorings in cigarettes because of their potential appeal to children, but left unsettled the question of menthol. The law stipulated that the FDA could prohibit menthol cigarettes only if it could demonstrate that a ban was a net benefit to public health and took into account unintended consequences such as an illicit market.The agency concluded in 2013 that menthols were harder to quit and likely posed a greater health risk than regular cigarettes. But the Obama administration didn’t move the policy forward after that. In 2017, Scott Gottlieb, then commissioner of the FDA, sought and obtained support from the Trump administration to advance the menthol-cigarette ban as part of a broader regulatory plan for the tobacco industry. When he left the agency in 2019, Trump administration officials shelved the plan, according to people familiar with the matter.
When big brother goes crazy, it almost always wants to make me do what they’re trying to ban. I feel better being smoke-free, though.
Big government and sports make me petty. Go away.
Repeat after me: PROHIBITION NEVER WORKS. The war on drugs is one of the worst policies and a waste of money we’ve ever had.
I wonder if this would make the government change its mind. They might lose a ton of tax money with the ban. *gasp*
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