Officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are poised to impose a sweeping plan to ban menthol cigarettes, which are smoked by about 80% of black smokers. The federal agency says menthol masks the harshness of smoking, making it easier to start and harder to quit.
Even though the ban would prevent hundreds of thousands of smoking-related deaths over 40 years, the Biden administration is delaying it to avoid angering black voters ahead of the November election.
"The way in which they've decided that they are going to delay this is done for, in my opinion, blatantly political reasons," responds Craig DeLuz, an ambassador for the Project 21 Black Leadership Network. "They recognize that they need all the numbers that they can get, the traditional Democratic votes, because right now, Joe Biden is bleeding support. He doesn't want to do anything to upset any of his constituencies, and that includes African Americans who smoke menthol cigarettes."
"In other words, he cares more about getting their votes than he does about … saving their lives," DeLuz summarizes.
The bloc of black voters has historically been one of the Democratic Party's most loyal constituencies, but last month, a Wall Street Journal poll revealed that President Biden is losing support among black men in seven swing states.
While most black males still intend to vote Democrat, 30% said they are either "definitely" or "probably" going to vote for former President Donald Trump in November.
Anti-smoking advocates have been pushing the FDA to eliminate menthol since the agency gained authority to regulate certain tobacco ingredients in 2009, but it is the only cigarette flavor not banned under that law -- a carveout negotiated by industry allies in Congress.
Still, the law instructed the FDA to study the issue.
