On Tuesday, December 10, 2024, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took the first step toward a new rule forcing the tobacco industry to reduce nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels, by submitting the rule to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the waning days of the Biden administration. FDA first put forward the idea in 2022 but, as far as we knew, had done nothing since.
Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known, more addictive than heroin or cocaine. If this rule passes, it would likely mean the end of the tobacco epidemic, saving millions of American lives every year.
Nicotine is found naturally in tobacco and some other plants, where it evolved as an insecticide (sounds like something we want inside us, right?). Over the decades, the tobacco industry has spent huge sums figuring out how to chemically make cigarettes more addictive. That’s why the 50th anniversary Surgeon General’s Report on smoking called cigarettes far more dangerous now than in 1964.
In fact, the tobacco industry does not consider itself a tobacco industry. They are a nicotine-delivery industry, in other words, Big Addiction rather than Big Tobacco. Their entire business model is based on addiction. Cigarettes are simply the cheapest, most profitable way to keep their customers addicted to nicotine.
If this FDA rule moves forward, it would not be the first time such a regulation was passed. In 2022, New Zealand/Aotearoa passed a nicotine reduction policy as part of a sweeping tobacco “endgame” package. Big Nicotine went full-court press to get it overturned, and unfortunately, the entire law was scrapped in early 2024 after a new government took office.
The industry should have a bit of a problem when it comes to arguing against nicotine reduction. What would they say…“But cigarettes must be addictive!”
It may seem counterintuitive to get rid of nicotine when nearly all the damage from tobacco use comes from the smoke. The deleterious effects of nicotine on youth brain development are well-researched, but beyond that nicotine causes few health problems. But nicotine is the chemical that hooks kids and keeps adults smoking, even against their own wishes. Lowering nicotine to non-addictive levels would drastically reduce youth uptake and make quitting far easier. It would likely be the end of cigarettes.
That said, there is another, more obvious solution: Just ban the sale of cigarettes.
Unfortunately, when Congress gave FDA authority over tobacco in 2009, it made sure to forbid them from banning cigarettes, because they understood that if the FDA applied the same standards to cigarettes as it does to every other consumer product it would have no choice but to ban them.
However, at the same time Congress made it clear that states could ban cigarettes, and many states pass that authority down to local governments. And they are using that authority.
As of today, there are 16 towns and cities that have passed laws that either ban tobacco product sales immediately or phase out their sale. That’s 10 more than we had a year ago. Let’s keep this momentum going and not wait on FDA.
