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Biden releases 11th-hour plan to lower nicotine in cigarettes

VLN cigarettes, made by a company in North Carolina, have ultralow levels of nicotine. They haven’t proved popular with smokers.  (Cornell Watson/for The Washington Post)
By Rachel Roubein Washington Post

The Biden administration released a proposal Wednesday to dramatically reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes, a move that anti-smoking advocates believe would save millions of lives but that threatens the powerful tobacco industry.

The Food and Drug Administration’s plan to slash nicotine to minimally or nonaddictive levels represents a last-ditch effort by President Joe Biden to influence tobacco policy. The agency is proposing the policy in the waning days of his term, leaving it up to Donald Trump to finalize the effort – or scrap it – once he takes office.

Under the plan, tobacco companies would be required to cut nicotine in cigarettes to no more than 0.7 milligrams per gram of tobacco, which the FDA says is significantly lower than the average concentration in products on the market. The agency’s proposal would also apply to most cigars and pipe tobacco, but not to e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches.

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, a cardiologist, has been an ardent champion of the nicotine reduction plan, referring to it as “the number one priority” in an interview last month. The effort also aligns with Biden’s goal of cutting U.S. cancer rates by half.

“Multiple administrations have acknowledged the immense opportunity that a proposal of this kind offers to address the burden of tobacco-related disease,” Califf said in a statement. He added: “I hope we can all agree that significantly reducing the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the U.S. is an admirable goal we should all work toward.”

Nicotine – which is found naturally in tobacco plants – releases feel-good chemicals that fuel addiction and push people to smoke. Cigarettes, in turn, expose smokers to toxic carcinogens that can cause lung cancer and heart disease.

About 480,000 Americans die of smoking-related causes each year. The FDA estimates that more than 19 million people who smoke cigarettes would quit within the first five years after such a rule was implemented.

“Given these enormous benefits, we urge the incoming Trump Administration to move forward in finalizing and implementing this rule,” Yolonda C. Richardson, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in a statement. “Few actions would do more to fight chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease that greatly undermine health in the United States.”

Cigarette companies have long recognized that lower levels of nicotine could threaten their business, and the industry has argued that such a plan would effectively ban cigarettes and fuel an illicit market.

Anti-tobacco advocates have been frustrated that other tobacco-related policies, notably a ban on menthol cigarettes, stalled under Biden. But cutting nicotine in cigarettes has also been a long-held goal of advocates who have called the policy the “death knell” for smoking in America.

The plan released Wednesday is only a draft, and the public will be able to comment until Sept. 15. Advocates are hoping Trump follows through. A similar plan emerged early in his first administration but then languished.

Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s first FDA commissioner, announced he was pursuing an ambitious plan to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes in summer 2017, and the agency sought public feedback the following year.

The plan lost momentum after Gottlieb left the agency in spring 2019. Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products at the time, recalled he was later told by FDA political staff to stop working on efforts to reduce nicotine as well as efforts to ban menthol in cigarettes, the Post reported this week. Zeller declined to identify the officials. A former federal health official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, confirmed that the instructions came from the White House.

A 2009 federal law gave the FDA the power to regulate cigarettes. The agency is not allowed to ban cigarettes or impose a zero-nicotine requirement, but it can dictate standards for tobacco products – such as nicotine and ingredient levels – if needed to protect public health.