The Biden administration is considering requiring tobacco companies to reduce the nicotine levels in all cigarettes sold in the U.S. to levels at which they are no longer addictive, according to people familiar with the matter.
Administration officials are considering the policy as they approach a deadline for declaring the administration’s intentions on another tobacco question: whether or not to ban menthol cigarettes.
The Food and Drug Administration must respond in court by April 29 to a citizens’ petition to ban menthols by disclosing whether the agency intends to pursue such a policy. The Biden administration is now weighing whether to move forward on a menthol ban or a nicotine reduction in all cigarettes—or both, the people familiar with the matter said.
The White House and the FDA didn’t immediately comment Monday.
The nicotine-reduction policy under consideration would lower the chemical in cigarettes to nonaddictive or minimally addictive levels, aiming to push millions of smokers to either quit or switch to less harmful alternatives such as nicotine gums, lozenges or e-cigarettes. A menthol ban, meanwhile, would aim to curb smoking initiation among young people, many of whom start with menthols. Both policies would take years to implement and would likely face legal challenges.
Scott Gottlieb,
an FDA commissioner under the Trump administration, pursued both a menthol ban and a reduction of nicotine in cigarettes as part of a broader tobacco policy he proposed in 2017. But after he left the agency in 2019, both plans were shelved.
New Zealand last week proposed sharply reducing nicotine levels in cigarettes and raising the legal smoking age as part of a broader policy aimed at ending smoking.
Nicotine itself doesn’t cause cancer, heart disease or lung disease, according to the FDA. But it hooks people on cigarettes, which are linked to 480,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.
Tobacco companies have said that any change in cigarettes’ nicotine levels must be backed up by scientific research and should consider potential consequences such as an increase in black-market sales.
Research funded by the FDA and the National Institutes of Health has shown that when nicotine was nearly eliminated from cigarettes, smokers were more likely to quit or seek a nicotine fix from less harmful alternatives such as e-cigarettes or gum compared, with smokers who continued using cigarettes with normal nicotine levels.
Lowering nicotine in cigarettes has been a subject of discussion inside the FDA since the 1990s. It can be done in different ways, such as genetically modifying tobacco plants or stripping nicotine from the leaf in the manufacturing process. In 2009, the Tobacco Control Act authorized the FDA…
Read More: Biden Administration Considering Rule to Cut Nicotine in Cigarettes