From: The Truth Initiative
Inaction in the face of opportunities to ban menthol cigarettes
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Although the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act banned flavored cigarettes in 2009, lawmakers granted an exemption to menthol cigarettes, which remain the only flavored cigarette still on the market. The act gave authority to regulate tobacco products to the FDA, which had the opportunity to ban menthol in 2011, but didn’t due to a “lack of research.”
However, a 2011 report from the FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee concluded that “the removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit public health in the United States.” The FDA published its own report two years later, which found that “menthol cigarettes pose a public health risk above that seen with non-menthol cigarettes.”
