FDA to seek ban on menthol cigarettes

Stopping short of its threatened ban on flavored e-cigarettes, the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that it would allow stores to continue selling the products, but only from closed-off areas that are inaccessible to minors.

At the same time, the agency moved to outlaw two traditional tobacco products that disproportionately harm African-Americans: menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars.

The proposed menthol ban would be the most aggressive action the FDA has taken against the tobacco industry in nearly a decade, and it was notable given the Trump administration’s business-friendly approach to regulatory issues.

If it clears the usual federal regulatory hurdles, a process which could take at least two years, the menthol ban could make a significant dent in cigarette sales. Menthol cigarettes account for about 35 percent of cigarette sales in the United States.

The three measures have a common target: the myriad flavors used to entice young people to vape and smoke. In restricting flavored e-cigarettes, the FDA is trying to curb the rapid escalation of youth vaping. Some 3.6 million people under the age of 18 reported using e-cigarettes, the agency said.

“Almost all adult smokers started smoking when they were kids,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the agency’s commissioner, said in a statement. “Today, we significantly advance our efforts to combat youth access and appeal with proposals that firmly and directly address the core of the epidemic: flavors.”

Still, the plan to sequester flavored e-cigarettes in stores, rather than ban selling them, was surprising to many people since details of a stronger proposal leaked out widely from the agency over the past week. Members of Congress sent out news releases, praising the agency for a ban that did not materialize. Federal law already prohibits the sale of cigarettes and e-cigarettes to anyone under 18.

In trying to navigate between public health concerns and a reluctance to heavily restrict e-cigarettes at this time, Gottlieb urged manufacturers to police themselves. “We hope that in the next 90 days, manufacturers choose to remove flavored ENDS products” — referring to the devices — “where kids can access them and from online sites that do not have sufficiently robust age-verification procedures,” he said in the statement.

The mere threat of a ban, which he suggested two months ago, led e-cigarette makers in recent days to announced plans of their own that go beyond what the FDA laid out on Thursday.

Juul Labs, which is by far the largest e-cigarette seller, announced Tuesday it would suspend store sales of its flavored pods, except for mint, menthol and tobacco, and shut down its social media promotions. And it said it would toughen its online age-verification requirements.