Guy Bentley, director of Consumer Freedom at Reason Foundation, told Axios that the rule would open up “an $80 billion market” to “Mexican cartels and the Chinese Communist Party.”
Standardizing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes by lowering the amount would limit their addiction potential and help smokers kick the habit, a nicotine addiction researcher at the University of Minnesota Medical School told Axios.
Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council (USHBC), condemned the move as “last-minute tobacco overregulation” and “tone-deaf” in a statement to the Daily Caller.
The FDA had proposed the Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products rule back in 2022 in an attempt to reduce the 480,000 smoking-related annual deaths. FDA-affiliated researchers predicted in a 2018 study that the rule could cut down the rate of smoking from its current value of 12.8% to 1.4% by 2060. (RELATED: Tobacco Smoker Experiences ‘Unusual’ And ‘Rare’ Throat Complication)
“The rule to require lower nicotine levels in cigarettes is yet another illustration of the many reasons so many voters, especially Hispanic voters, felt abandoned by the Democrats in 2024,” Palomarez wrote. “While our communities and businesses grapple with unprecedented costs of living and economic uncertainty, the Administration’s tone deaf approach remains focused on telling voters what they determine is good for them.”
Jeffrey A. Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, wrote that some smokers could take to smoking multiple reduced-nicotine cigarettes to achieve the same effect that fewer regular cigarettes gave them, citing researchers. A higher-nicotine cigarette black market could also arise, Singer argued.
It also could rob American public schools of $33 billion in tax revenue from the sale of cigarettes and $14 billion in annual sales of cigarettes by small businesses, creating a vacuum for a cartel-run black market, Palomarez claimed.