Like a lot of people, I was a smoker back in the day. Smokes weren’t taxed then as horrendously as they are now; I remember paying under a buck a pack for unfiltered Camels. I haven’t touched a cigarette in decades, but I still enjoy a good cigar now and then, and yes, you pay handsomely for them as well.
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There are always ways around those onerous taxes, of course. Ask any smuggler. This is, however, something the outgoing Biden administration, in particular the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), doesn’t seem to understand. On Tuesday, we learned that the FDA is moving ahead with a rule that will effectively ban every cigarette now on the market in the United States. Yes, really.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is moving forward with a regulatory rule in the final days of the Biden administration that would effectively ban cigarettes currently on the market in favor of products with lower nicotine levels, which could end up boosting business for cartels operating on the black market, an expert tells Fox News Digital.
“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,” Rich Marianos, former assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the current chair of the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network, told Fox News Digital of the proposal.
It’s not a done deal yet; the rule has yet to be finalized. Fortunately, there is a process for these things, and this one is still in the works — and, presumably, open for a new presidential administration to point out that this doesn’t pass the stupid test.
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The FDA confirmed to Fox Digital on Monday that as of Jan. 3, the Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products had completed a regulatory review, but that the proposed rule has not yet 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 told Fox Digital. “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.”
This is going to backfire so spectacularly that it will be visible from space.
See Related: Senate Hearing: Abboud Blasts Schumer’s War on Vape After FDA Lifts JUUL Ban
Biden Administration Drops Planned Ban on Menthol Cigarettes Over Fear of Angering Minority Voters
The Biden administration appears to have learned nothing from Prohibition, or any other time the federal government has tried this kind of heavy-handed approach. The Mexican cartels, when they learn of this, will be rubbing their hands together in glee; another billion-dollar black market will soon be opening up, courtesy of the Biden administration, complete with turf wars and all that goes with it. Because if people want some coffin nails with the full dose of nicotine, they are going to have them, one way or another. States that did things like limit beers to 3.2 horse output saw the same kind of things when folks went to a neighboring state and stocked the trunks of their cars full of the full-test stuff. But this is a nationwide rule being proposed, which means the smuggling will be across international borders, and that, folks, means organized crime.
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On their way out the door, the Biden administration has pulled some really stupid stuff, but this may be one of their dumbest ideas yet.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House regarding concerns over the proposal if it were to take effect but did not receive a response.
You don’t say.
This seems appropriate.
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