An expert recently warned that the Biden-Harris administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is advancing a new rule that would ban most cigarettes currently available in stores and would require cigarettes to feature lower nicotine levels, which he believes would be a “gift” to drug cartels and other criminal organizations controlling the black market.
Rich Marianos, chairman of the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network and former assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told Fox News, “Biden’s ban is a gift with a bow and balloons to organized crime cartels with it, whether it’s cartels, Chinese organized crime, or Russian mafia. It’s going to keep America smoking, and it’s going to make the streets more violent.”
Marianos warned Fox News that if the Biden-Harris administration lowers the legal level of nicotine in cigarettes and other tobacco products, illegal tobacco trafficking will likely skyrocket in the United States.
“This decision is being thrown down the public’s throat without one ounce of thought and preparation. Nobody sat down with law enforcement, nobody sat down with any doctors,” Marianos said. “No one sat down with any regulators to find out, ‘Hey, look, what are the unintended ramifications of such a poor choice,’ and that’s what I’m going to call it, a poor choice.”
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Marianos told Fox News that Mexican drug cartels could smuggle illegal tobacco products across the southern border into the United States just like they smuggle fentanyl and other illegal drugs. He warned that Chinese and Russian criminal organizations are also positioned in the United States and could benefit from an expansion of the black market caused by additional restrictions on tobacco products.
According to Fox News, the FDA confirmed on Monday that the Tobacco Product Standard of Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products had completed the regulatory review process as of January 3; however, the agency said the new rule has not been finalized.
“The proposed rule, ‘Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products,’ is displaying in the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) ROCIS system as having completed regulatory review on January 3,” an FDA spokesman said.
The FDA spokesman added, “As the FDA has previously said, a proposed product standard to establish a maximum nicotine level to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes and certain other combusted tobacco products, when finalized, is estimated to be among the most impactful population-level actions in the history of U.S. tobacco product regulation. At this time, the FDA cannot provide any further comment until it is published.”
