FDA revives federal effort to ban menthol cigarettes

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health regulators pledged again Thursday to try to ban menthol cigarettes, this time under pressure from African American groups to remove the mint flavor popular among Black smokers.

The Food and Drug Administration has attempted several times to get rid of menthol but faced pushback from Big Tobacco, members of Congress and competing political interests in both the Obama and Trump administrations. Any menthol ban will take years to implement and will likely face legal challenges from tobacco companies.

Thursday’s announcement is the result of a lawsuit filed by anti-smoking and medical groups last summer to force the FDA to finally make a decision on menthol, alleging that regulators had “unreasonably delayed” responding to a 2013 petition seeking to ban the flavor.

The deadline for the agency’s response was Thursday. The FDA said it aims to introduce the regulations banning the flavor in the coming year.

The action would also ban menthol and fruity flavors from low-cost cigars, which are increasingly popular with young people, especially Black teens.

“Taken together, these policies will help save lives and improve the public health of our country as we confront the leading cause of preventable disease and death,” Mitch Zeller, the FDA's head of tobacco, said in a statement.

Menthol is the only cigarette flavor that was not banned under the 2009 law that gave the FDA authority over tobacco products, an exemption negotiated by industry lobbyists. The act did, though, instruct the agency to continue to weigh banning menthol.

The flavor’s persistence has infuriated anti-smoking advocates, who point to research that menthol’s numbing effect masks the harshness of smoking, likely making it easier to start and harder to quit. The mint-flavored...