The Biden administration has put a lot of effort into Nanny-State the cigarettes. Since Biden began occupying the Oval Office, the Food and Drug Administration crafted rules to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars, as well as proposed measures to reduce the level of nicotine in tobacco products.
The total ban has been kicked down the road, and the menthol rules are not expected to be phased in starting March 2024.
The Biden administration has once again delayed banning menthol cigarettes, infuriating officials of public health groups who say the products are responsible for taking hundreds of thousands of American lives.On Wednesday, the White House quietly updated its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website to reflect that any final ban on menthol wouldn’t take place until at least March. Even then, it’s expected to take years for menthol products to be off store shelves. The ban was previously supposed to take effect by the end of December.
The reason for the delay? Civil rights groups argue the ban targets blacks and hurts Biden where it counts…in the polls.
[I]n private phone calls, civil rights groups including the ACLU; the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, or NOBLE; and Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network warned the White House against the plan, with some officials suggesting that a regulatory crackdown could harm President Joe Biden’s reelection chances with Black voters.A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities involved, confirmed that the delay was the result of those conversations.”It is a signal to the community that lobbied on this that we heard you and we need some more time to look at this,” the official told ABC News.
It appears the polling is quite ominous among the group that tends to be Biden’s biggest fan base. Especially among the younger ones
Biden started his presidency with an 86 percent average approval rating among Black Americans, higher than any other racial group. But by July 2022, that number was down 23 percentage points, to 63 percent. That said, his approval rating among Black Americans — unlike the other three racial groups we looked at — did mildly increase ahead of the midterm elections. But since early 2023, it has dropped again to 60 percent, the lowest his approval rating has ever been among Black Americans during his presidency….While younger Democrats of all races are more progressive and critical of Biden than their elders are, [Terrance Woodbury, CEO of the Democratic-aligned polling firm HIT Strategies] says he’s seen polling that shows it’s “much more concentrated among Black voters.” Part of the steep decline in young Black Americans’ approval of Biden stems from the fact that their approval started out so high — it’s “a higher bar to drop from,” as Woodbury put it. “When I sit in focus groups with young Black voters and ask what [Democrats have] done to make their lives better, they’re hard pressed to come up with an answer, despite this administration delivering on much of the Black agenda,” Woodbury said. “That’s the communication challenge that we have a year to overcome.”
Meanwhile, public health advocates are cloaking themselves in “science” to force more rules onto Americans. They are outraged by the delay.
Public health groups said based on past history, they’re worried the delay will go beyond March.“We were expecting to see final rules in August this year. It’s now December. And so an additional delay to March certainly begs the question, how much longer are we gonna have to wait? How many times are we going to punt this?” asked Emily Holubowich, national senior vice president of federal advocacy at the American Heart Association.“The science is clear. The rules need to be released now,” Holubowich said.
If the Biden administration had put in half the effort on border control that it did for cigarette control, we would currently be in much better shape as a nation.
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