The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) looks poised to introduce an outright ban on menthol cigarettes, a product favored by over 18.9 million Americans. That’s much more than an inconvenience. It paves the way for Mexican drug cartels and Chinese state-backed purveyors of counterfeit cigarettes to gain a foothold inside American borders.
Thanks to America’s appallingly policed drug laws, there is already rampant activity from Mexican-led criminal gangs in the U.S. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), around 90% of the drugs sold in American cities like Chicago come from Mexico. Much of that trade is down to a single mob boss named Nemesio Cervantes, known as ‘El Mencho’, whom the DEA estimates is behind one third of the drugs sold in the U.S.
No doubt El Mencho and his associates will leap on the opportunity to peddle products to a whole new market in the United States: those who don’t take drugs but do smoke menthol cigarettes. When law-abiding citizens find they can no longer purchase their menthols legally, all the evidence from studies of similar policies suggests they will turn straight to illicit vendors.
It's not just Mexican criminals who stand to benefit from this black-market boon. A 2015 FDA-backed study titled ‘Understanding the U.S. Illicit Tobacco Market’ identifies China as the source of most of the world’s counterfeit cigarettes. In 2021, intrepid journalists lifted the lid on a single Chinese state-backed company which produces almost 50% of worldwide cigarette production and already funnels its products illegally into countries across Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. The U.S. government might as well put up a banner at the border saying, ‘Black Market Tobacco Salesmen Welcome’.
The FDA’s mad ban plan will distract police from spiraling crime, sending them after cigarette sellers instead, at a cost of around $6.6 billion, not to mention the lost revenue from tobacco taxes. Meanwhile, a huge chunk of the menthol market will simply turn to illicit sellers, as so many already do for drugs, to the delight of those who profit from selling illegal products to Americans, such as Mexican drug cartels.
The menthol ban policy will especially worsen the lot of African-American smokers. It’s ironic that politicians like Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D-IL), who speak often of racial justice issues, support the measure. Kelly is chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust, which claims “protecting health equity and reducing health disparities in all communities” are among its key aims.
Banning menthol cigarettes will widen, not improve, health disparities. African-Americans disproportionately choose menthols over non-mentholated alternatives. A whopping 85% of African-American smokers favor menthols. That didn’t stop Rep. Kelly from writing a letter to the FDA “expressing strong support for the proposed rule to remove menthol cigarettes from the market”, along with a cabal of her Democratic colleagues on the Congressional Black Caucus.
African-Americans are much more likely to end up behind bars than any other racial group, especially for drug offenses. Making menthol cigarettes illegal too will almost certainly result in yet more African-Americans associating with the wrong kinds of people and getting themselves into trouble, because the black market will be their only option.
The Biden administration is allowing – and even encouraging – the FDA to indulge its paternalistic instincts. The menthol ban is just one of a slew of aggressive new interventions coming down the pipeline which will do more harm than good. It will place law-abiding African-American menthol smokers on the wrong side of the law and invite Mexican cartels and Chinese manufacturers to expand their illegal activities in America. If only the FDA could take a more moderated, nuanced approach to complex policy issues like smoking, rather than lunging to tax and regulate products it doesn’t like out of existence, all these unnecessary new problems could be avoided.
Jason Reed is a policy writer based in London, UK, contributing to a wide range of outlets on both sides of the Atlantic and acting as a spokesperson for Young Voices, a U.S.-based non-profit organization. He tweets @JasonReed624.
